My Beautiful Spirit Arises

 

Part 5 of 30

My Fragile Self-Esteem

I’m struck right away by the question, When will my beautiful spirit arise? Or, Why should I have any self-esteem at all? Yes, I’ve been in deep dog-doo mourning its fragility. That’s common to many of us, which includes me. But even though it's common doesn't mean it's a just complaint. Because I’m only seeing it from my own point-of-view -- my selfishness is blind as a bat -- obviously a common thing with socially self-oriented creatures. I want it just because I want it. Me, me, me, kick me down, turn me 'round, fetch a pail of water, me!

Being social, of course, it's useful to have stronger self-esteem. Since we’re always in a pecking order of sorts. Like at the dinner table in a family of 12 kids. You don’t want the oldest kids depriving the youngest. So your mother has to be there with a 10-foot cane pole and a paperweight duct-taped to the end. The kids get out of line, the oldest ones hogging the pizza or burgers, she has to come down hard on their heads. And send them promptly to their rooms without food. It’s only just. “You ate your fill yesterday and your brothers got nothing. Now you get nothing and your brothers their fill. And so forth. (Contact me for more parenting tips, available on need-to-know basis, plausible deniability possible.)

Naturally, if you have enough dysfunction taking place not only at the dinner table but throughout the house, with relationships marred and mangled by selfishness and everyone insatiable, it can be a downer. And mothers can’t be everywhere at once. In fact, they're often with the rest of the coven desperate to find new ways to negotiate their families through the modern world. It’s to everyone's benefit for new generations to born and raised, or so they say. It’s part of the propaganda package most of us accept, and I’m not saying it’s wrong. Or maybe it’d be good in the long run to destroy the planet. It'd clear the way for something new to arise in five or six billion years, Nature taking the long view. With no one here those eons take just a blink...

But what about me? Let’s leave feeble mankind aside for a while. Mankind gets all the press and it gets too much. I want to know what’s going to happen to me, me, me now. As far as I can tell, I’m the center of all things. Certainly my own thoughts are uppermost in my mind. I get hungry, thirsty, and even now I’m craving the lust of the flesh (not really, just throwing out some red meat.)

My hideous blobbish form is rousing (see graphic). Whatever bands have held me down, I concentrate my strength with intensity to cast them off. My fragile self-esteem, enforced on me by outside powers, shall be no more! I shall arise from this squalor, and like powerful blobs everywhere, coat the world itself with my being! And when that dries, a second coat. Arise! Arise! While I still have life and breath, I shall arise, and … take over the world! ... Who am I kidding?