Thank you for March Hares and Our Eternal Mating Season

Madder than a March hare has been a synonym for lunacy, originating from observations by Erasmus (who actually referred to Marsh Hares) and Chaucer who coined the phrase, long before Alice met her little pal in Wonderland.

In some places, March is the breeding season for hares—and it makes them do very strange things.

While I will not go into the exhibitionistic behaviors of breeding hares, I would like to point out that they are not so different from humans.

But humans are always mad with breeding season, eh?

So many things are designed to accommodate and keep us breeding, to keep us crazy with the desire to breed.

We got all manner of 900 numbers, TV commercials, products designed to keep us up and at it, and seductive mating rituals that make us appear cuckoo to the rest of the animal kingdom (except Bonobo monkeys—they don’t think we’re crazy at all in comparison).

We dance, we sweet talk, we puff out our chests, strut our stuff, risk our lives, and beckon to each other with the call of the Sirens to get crazy with love so we can make more crazy humans and keep the species goin’.

But, again, unlike hares, our mad season lasts all year long.

Well, we can’t keep dancing for 365 days at a time—that’s exhausting.

So we got clever and created romance to give us a break from the physical exercise.

Romance allows us to just sit still and think about mating for a while before we have to put bodily energy into it.

Romance allows us to bask in the afterglow, daydream, write poetry and songs, send flowers, straighten out our clothing and walk, out of the airplane bathroom, back to our seats like nothing ever happened.

Romance allows us to regenerate afterward and gives us a gradient sanity prior to going mad.

The March Hare has no such allowance. It’s all or nothing.

This is March.

Watch out for crazy bunnies running through the streets, hiding things under their raincoats!

ADDENDUM:

This makes me very suspicious of the Easter Bunny!

Thank You for Deserving What You Get

Victor Hugo said…

To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.

Is it our Deeds that make us deserving of Happiness?

Are there actually people who do not deserve to be happy?

If everybody got what they deserved, what would the world look like?

And who determines what someone else deserves?

Unalienable rights, those rights bestowed upon us by Nature, grants us happiness as a deserved part of being a human.

When does an unalienable right become an inalienable right, a right that can be surrendered, sold, or transferred?

It’s not up to me to decide what anybody else deserves.

But it is up to me to accept what I deserve.

If you feel like you deserve to be happy,

Click and print this Deed I made up to hang on your wall.

Oh, and put your own name on it.

Yeah, Own it.

Thank you for Trust

Among the many things I have learned from my conversations with friends,

there are two statements that play predominant roles.

“Humans are the species that generate sentences.”

and

“We are beings that trust. That is how we form societies.”

These two statements are very complex but for my purposes I will simplify.

Sometimes the human that generates a sentence is not always worthy of the trust that others may innately invest in that sentence.

Examples:

Politicians

Cult leaders

Teen age boys on Prom night

A person that owes money

Those with concealed agendas

And sometimes a person with the best intentions who inadvertently blurts out a random sentence that their brain generated, but who has no intention or ability to honor that statement as a promise.

We are all capable of Lying.

Still, when we encounter a lie, we feel a betrayal at the core of our innate trust as though we were wounded by  a poisonous spear.

Even after many wounds, we somehow are compelled to trust again.

It is our nature.

It is also the factor that gives con men, exploiters, and those unfortunate humans without conscience an edge.

Sometimes we say to ourselves “I will never trust anyone again”.

That’s a lie too.

We can’t help it.

It’s what we do.

We will trust again, albeit with our eyes opened a little wider.

I am thankful for trust.

I trust others to do the right thing.

I trust myself to do the right thing.

Otherwise, we could not move forward or accomplish anything.

You can’t even move a couch unless you trust the person at the other end to hold on to their side while going down the stairs.

I can not live like a couch could fall on me at any moment.

Thank You for Courageous Names in the Brave New World

In this brave new world of secret identities— screen names, avatars, and pseudonyms to represent who we think we are or how we want others to perceive us—we seem to be far more courageous with our “self“ expression.

Anonymity gives us the freedom to be “Ourselves” among others. ??

There have been times when the nom de plume served many women in the male dominated 19th century and provided privacy to authors of exposés.

I don’t think those times have passed, just transpired into these times in which we tout freedom of speech through the invisible gag order of patriotism and security. But I digress…

Last night, in reading a local newspaper on line, I observed cruel comments on a particular article which clearly came from folks who would never publish such things with their real names attached. Instead they used sophomoric nick names that incorporated the creativity of a porcupine on quaaludes with the scintillating expressiveness of a rusted barbed wire fence.

It disturbed me to think people could be so mean. It forced me to ponder the deterioration of things we have established as civilized behavior.

We are evolving into a society in which we no longer need to be accountable for things we say because we are protected by a false identity which we created on a keyboard. We may as well get down and dirty, eh?

Let’s all get “Courage” names!

We can send letters, text message, e-mails, and blog under these names without fear of retribution because “we” didn’t say it, our screen name did.

Our new slogan can be “My Avatar made me do it!”

No more awkward social interactions with the added stress of manners and sensitivity!

We can wear our avatar faces in public and say anything we want!

We can tell people they have bad breath, ugly clothes, and cellulite on their butts.

We can mock the less fortunate, cuss at old ladies, and say all manner of mean things that we would never imagine saying to some one if they could see our fragile Real face.

Since my real name is Lea Kelley (Lea means “meadow” and Kelley means “bright headed defender or warrior” I will make my Courage name far more powerful than “a red head defending a field of flowers”

My new courage name is …Wait!

If I tell you, I won’t be able to be mean! You’ll know who I am. I will have to behave. Never mind.

Thank You for Do Overs

The end draws near.

Tonight… all the mistakes you made, all those things you wish you would not have said, all the opportunities you screwed up, all the junk food you devoured, all the toys you broke, all the changes you forgot to make, and all the ugly clothes you wore in public because everything else was in the laundry, will disappear at midnight.

At precisely 12:01, in whatever time zone you live, a stranger will kiss you on the forehead and yell “Do Overs!” and run away.

You will awake in the morning, smelling of champagne, with confetti stuck to your neck, mumbling “Who slobbered on my eyebrow?”

As you shuffle your way toward the coffee pot, it will hit you like a party horn blast and angels will sing (a little too loud) and you will realize you are the recipient of a shiny new gift that no one can take away—another year of your life!

Congratulations, you get 365 more days to try it again!

Happy New Year!

Thank You for NOT Feelin’ Sorry For Me— I’m not a Christmas Orphan!

Oh, for cryin’ out loud, already!  Yes, I am alone at Christmas.

Yes, I am havin’  tofu chili dogs and pop tarts for the holiday!

Yes, there is no dead tree in my home, covered in precarious electrical baubles threatening to ignite so I can run toward a camera like Bruce Willis after the explosion.

Yes, I got no children jumpin’ on my bed at 6 am to tell me we had a break-in last night and they wanna open the evidence right now.

Yes, nobody is chasing me around the house, waving gingerbread men with a missing eye and foot, making scary voices from The Fly “Heeeeelp Meeee!”.

Yes, I don’t have to find my way over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house so she can point out how fat I was a child and ask me why I’m not married in front of the neighbor’s single middle aged son who works at 7-11.

Yes, I don’t have to wear one of those sweaters with Santa pasted on it because it was hand picked especially for me by an aunt who thinks I am still 10 years old and tall for my age.

Yes, I did not spend my rent money on perfume gift boxes, Whitman chocolates, and generic make up kits with twelve shades of eye shadow.

Yes, I did not go to Walmart Hell, not even once on Christmas eve because I forgot to buy something for somebody who’s name I also forgot.

Yes, I don’t have to drink nine brandy eggnogs so I can have a decent conversation about WWII with my father-in-law.

Yes, I don’t have to watch “It’s a Beautiful Life” with family members who swear we’ve only seen it twenty two times, wishing I still smoked pot.

And yes, I can see why you feel sorry for me, and thank you for calling, but really, I promise, I am okay!

Seriously, go on without me, I’ll be here when you get back, singing “Silent Night” with my usual gratitude.

Yes, all is calm….

Thank You for A Heart of Armor and Tinsel

I was a gangly, awkward kid with screaming red hair. I was too tall, had skinny legs, big feet, and no command over my growing body.

I could find a way to trip over a piece of lint.

Yep, if there was a clumsy kid that was meritable of being ridiculed, shunned, or targeted by peers as the outlet for derision only known to children, ‘twas I.

Redheads have to be tough kids.

All redheaded boys should be named Sue so they can practice beating up their dads when they get older.

Redheaded girls learn to read fast and run fast— early.

They have to outwit jokes about woodpeckers, copperheads, and rusty brains or they have to fight or run fast (hiding is not an option with bright red hair).

So, I got smart and I got tough, yep. (insert Johnny Cash soundtrack)

Other children are the best teachers when it comes to developing social armor while growing into one’s feet.

My social armor was a great facade. I was aloof to peer jeers. I was self righteous in my defensively inflated intellectual capacity—did I mention kids also hate it if you act smarter than them.

I tripped and fell and gangled my way through childhood, pretending I was normal and other kids were just immature.

I learned to analyze, justify, and tolerate the ignorant behavior of others.

I thought I was doin’ pretty well with my armor development, immune to verbal cannibalism, until I had to confront a formidable act of kindness.

Some silly kid actually said “I’m sorry” .

I was completely befuddled and burst into tears.

Kindness can turn armor into tinsel. And all the bravado in the world crumbles into tiny shards of real feelings.

You know how, when you’re having a real hard time holding it all together, and your being brave and biting the bullet and pretending something doesn’t hurt?

You know how, when everything happens all at once, and you don’t know if you can cope but you do?

You know how you can keep going if you clench your little fist and wave it at God and say “You are not going to break me!” ?

Well, that’s all well and good until some unwitting kind person makes the erroneous gesture of asking “Hey, are you okay? Can I do something to help?”

The flood of not feeling on your own any more just drowns your toughness and suddenly you realize your armor was made of tinsel and you are allowed to cry.

Thank you for tears that can wash the rust off armor and reveal the tinsel underneath.

Tinsel is so much shinier than armor.

And tinsel weighs a lot less than armor on a person’s shoulders.

Also, if you’re clumsy and you fall down, tinsel won’t crush you.