I have come to the conclusion that the world has become too literal.
Dogmatic science has replaced dogmatic religion and we are no better off for it.
Dogma is bad in whatever form – irony at its finest!
What I see, as indicative of this literal attitude, is the lack of softness towards each other. The words we speak or write are to be perfectly crafted or suffer being torn to shreds by baying hounds. The nuance and subtlety of life are lost in favour of documented evidence. Science is dictating how life must look, from education, medicine, child rearing and career trajectories, everything seems to have a right or wrong way defined by statistics and data. Non-conforming becomes a label of conspiracy theorist or anarchist rather than simply a different perspective.
Recently some mothers inferred that one of my children should somehow be different and I saw this ‘literal’ thread play out in their reasoning. Firstly, they couldn’t seem to grasp that children aren’t always literal (our beautiful shining lights of sanity is this crazy world), therefore strong words or adult themes were read from the adult standpoint of shocking brevity rather than understanding how children explore and play with ideas and concepts that cross their paths in a truly innocent and harmless way. Second to that was the right or wrongness that comes with this societal indoctrination, if my child behaved differently to theirs, they must label mine wrong, so that their way would still be ‘right’. No allowance for different child personalities, developmental stages, parenting influences, beliefs and values… just simple right or wrong.
And it is utterly exhausting. One of the nails in the coffin with my mother was her determination to contradict and undermine my parenting values because they were different to hers. I saw that for her, it felt like I was somehow rejecting her by choosing a different approach and I understand how easy it is to interpret that but just far more simply, I’m my own person with my own viewpoint and that is all. I don’t have to back it up with data and science and facts and figures and I don’t want you to either.
Last week, a stranger mum apologised to me because her son was standing in my pathway and gazing dreamily up towards the sky. Shockingly, I managed to take an extra moment out of my day to walk around him rather than demand him move! But it really hit me hard how that mum felt she must apologise for her naturally day dreamy little one because we have become so desperately unforgiving as a society.
The rigidity of belief is what defines dogma and be it science or religion both lose their true beauty and power under these terms. Science can be a place of magical discovery with the full allowance to release a past belief in order to welcome a new and faith offers us the gentleness of understanding and forgiveness. All so beautiful when held lightly and playfully rather than with heavy and fearful hands.
One of my most memorable lines
from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk.’
Yes! Yes! Yes!
I am happy to be as queer and different to my neighbour as they are to theirs. It makes life so much more vibrant and gentle and interesting.