I live on a hill. It’s too steep for people to want to trick or treat on it. The last children to trick or treat were 4 years ago when the last kids on the street started going to friends houses instead of walking in our sleepy little street where the only interesting thing is the witch who goes into the yard on some nights to garden.
Just in case, I turn off the lights, stand a broom upright at the back door to repel unwanted guests and keep the jackolantern hidden so it does it’s jobs but doesn’t indicate I’m home.
Even with the history, and the unwelcoming appearance, there was a knock on the door. Unprepared, I looked around and my eyes settled on my mantle.
2 small pumpkins, no candy in the house. I blessed them with safe travels and peace and opened the door, hoping it would be enough.
What I can only assume was a little boy and a little girl in nondescript costumes, head to toe in moss, the other lost in folds and folds of fabric. “Trick or treat!”
I didn’t turn on the light, I said “Happy Halloween little ones, have a good night.” And gave them the pumpkins. They looked to each other and then back to me. They said “Pumpkins!” Tilted their costumes heads back so I could see a slight flash of a teeth, a smile…the only recognizable feature they’d presented.
I closed the door and lit another candle. My partner called from the kitchen telling me to just not open the door. But he didn’t realize everything I’d done to make sure no one would interrupt, he didn’t see the “children” with no parents on the street. I told him we wouldn’t have any more that night, and I was right.
Be kind my witches, many think the veil is thin for only one night, but it continues. As fall turns to winter people stay in doors. They don’t recognize when spirits wander outside.
Be kind my witches, a raised up or ruin, you don’t know what small act you’ll be judged on.
Jeff Sessions was interrupted by a priest who just directly quoted Jesus at him. Jeff Sessions was speaking about not allowing refugees and immigrants into this country.
The priest was removed. Another religious leader stood up and defended the priest, and they were also removed.
Powerful video. Jesus loves that priest, and that priest knows Jesus.
The other minister is a Baptist pastor, Rev. Darrell Hamilton, who I went to school with at Wake Forest Divinity.
These two? This is true Christianity. This is how you practice your faith.
Poor Jeff Sessions. It really sucks to have people express their religious freedom by using religion to tell you what a horrible hypocrite you are, doesn’t it?
From now on everybody who sees Sessions anywhere should just shout “repent” at him over and over until he either leaves or bursts into flame.
You know, when I was a Catholic I was told the devil wears many faces.
Jeff doesn’t like it when people point out his mask is slipping.
So I recently read an article about how the big thing in child-rearing in the 1980s was self-esteem; the thought was that creating good self-esteem in kids seemed linked to higher achievement, so there was a huge emphasis in the 80s and 90s, continuing into today, to build self-esteem in kids (we are now finding this is correlation but not causation, per the article). And it occurs to me that a lot of the shit Millennials get is the result of good self-esteem. I know we all hate ourselves and this seems like bullshit, just, bear with me.
This occurred to me because I was thinking about how colas are advertised now versus how they were advertised in my childhood in the 80s – now there’s stuff like the emojis on Pepsi bottles and the names on Coke bottles, whereas when I was a kid the big thing was athletes and movie stars drinking cola. And they were marketed in that way in the 80s because the idea was “You could be as cool as this dude if you drank Coca Cola.”
This marketing doesn’t work on the younger generation, because we don’t give a fuck about being as cool as That Dude. Because we were raised with this weird emphasis on self-esteem. Boomer style marketing doesn’t work on Millennials (or on a significant portion of GenX) because Millennials can’t be courted by the idea that consuming something will change their self image or their image in other peoples’ eyes. I mean yeah we’re all broke, but we understand that buying something won’t make us feel less broke. The idea of “Treat Yo Self” works because it’s based on the idea of buying something that will give you pleasure rather than status. We don’t need status. We make our own, or we find it irrelevant. Because: self-esteem. (Older generations tend to mistake this for self-absorption, because they don’t have it and thus believe it cannot be a virtue.)
BUT SAM, THEN WHY DO I HAVE SUCH ANXIETY? you ask. WHY AM I SO OBSESSED WITH MY FAILINGS?
Well, because you are conscious of them in a way that previous generations aren’t. You’re aware of your self-esteem issues because self-esteem as a concept is so familiar to you. Someone raised without that emphasis on self-esteem in schools and childhood media buys a status-maker because they’re not aware that’s what they’re doing. It’s an unconscious connection. They don’t understand why they feel inadequate, so they can only turn to the media to guide them towards a feeling of adequacy. Millennials know why they feel inadequate, and they know buying something won’t solve that.
Buying something may bring pleasure, but we know it won’t bring a permanent solution to our feelings of inner turmoil, and so our spending habits are radically different and our interaction with advertising is conditional in a way our parents’ isn’t. We want it proven that what’s being sold to us will either solve a real problem or bring a real pleasure, and if you can’t do either of those things, go fuck yourself. Because we have self-esteem.
Of course also we’re broke. But that didn’t stop previous generations, who just invented the credit card and kept going.
This is all just a theory, but it feels sound. That said, I’m open to information that supports or contradicts. I honestly don’t interact much with television advertising, so perhaps my view is skewed.
And then the real problem with the self-esteem movement was that it was based on praise, and the idea that you must be praiseworthy and wonderful 24/7, which isn’t actually possible. It’s a whole thing.
Also, you know: the whole “what coin do I put in the machine to get The Best Child out the other end?” thing, which I’ve ranted about before but am too tired to go find. Which is to say: a lot of the work that discovered that poor self esteem fucked people over, and that restoring self esteem* could help fix it was done by very dedicated and well-educated people, working hard with specific patients or groups of patients, in controlled environments, adapting their techniques to the situations they encountered. It was bespoke work. It was the equivalent of getting a dress perfectly tailored to you.
In the movement it was then applied sloppily, without consideration, on a mass-production scale, in a one-size-doesn’t-fit-anyone mentality. Like a machine spitting out smocks that are all size 9 but made with lycra so in theory they can SORT OF stretch to actually be on any body but oh god there are like maybe 15% of humans in the middle that actually look good and are comfortable, and maybe 30% of humans around that 15% who can more or less get by and fuck everyone else.
It was treated as “ah, praise = self-esteem = the coin I can put in the machine to get a High Achieving, Well-Balanced Child.” And everyone went YAY! and went about their business.
And it fucked us up. Bad.
One of the things I’m very firm on is I don’t lie. I’ve taught music, and I’ve had a bunch of other situations, and if something went wrong I’m gonna absolutely acknowledge it. I am also going to go “okay no, you’re right. That scale wasn’t as good as the scales you heard Georgina practicing while you were waiting for your lesson. Georgina is two years older than you, and started music when she was 5. This is not an appropriate benchmark to set for yourself, and also, you can BE GOOD ENOUGH without having to compete with Georgina. When I just told you ‘that was great’, I meant ‘you have improved significantly and by the measures that we talked about last class, which were evenness of rhythm and legato connection, that improvement is in fact great’.”
I break it down to that. Which has been an important part of working through this stuff.
*someone is going to niggle in with “but it shouldn’t be self-esteem, it should be self respect!” or “self worth!” or whatever, but like guys: this is rearranging deck furniture on the Titanic. The concept we are looking for here is “not thinking that you are worthless garbage, and thinking that you are capable of success and good things and this is okay”. What exact word we use for it is much less important here.
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