Sunday, May 6, 2018

Marvin X on Dealing With Genius Children

Let us begin with the fact that all children are born genius and their minds configure imaginings beyond our comprehension. I was and still am astounded with the remark from my grandson as we walked to Oakland's Lake Merritt when he was three years old at best: "Grandfather, you can't save the world but I can!" We were departing my Academy of Da Corner at 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland where I teach. Ishmael Reed said I was Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland.
But at this same time, some teenagers were talking and my grandson entered their conversation, yes, at three years old. One of the teenagers came over to me and said, "Yo, dude, your grandson all in our conversation like he a teenager! He somethin' else!" When he said he could save the world and I couldn't, it was a relief. I felt I was relieved of the weigh of the world. As a woman friend told me, you got to sometimes take off that X. That X is a burden and sometimes you just need to be you, not the savior of the world.

So I listen to my children and grandchildren. With my children, I don't need to listen because I see them execution their dreams, mine and their ancestors. I do not think they are fully conscious of ancestor dreams and elder dreams, too often youth and children think they invented the wheel.

I suspect my mother knew I was her special child, my siblings told me Mom said I was years later. But she gave me freedom, even when I was totally out of control and she put me out in my junior year in high school. I was all in her business as per her new man, father of her last three children.
In the Oedipus syndrome,I  wanted to reconcile with my father although this was my delusional thinking, Mother had grown beyond my father who was twenty years her senior when they married and although he taught her many things, he was from the past world and she was of the future. It was doubtful my stepfather understood this, but they did have three children, my half siblings or siblings fuck that half shit, we all came from Mama's womb. Mama's baby daddy's maybe.

But as per my children and grandchildren, I follow Kahlil Gibran, children come through us but they are not us, we are the bow, they are the arrow. So no matter I may want them to continue my dreams, I step back to let them discover their bliss as Joseph Campbell taught us. You shall never be happy until you follow your bliss, i.e., your purpose or mission in life. Your elders and ancestors talk to you but you must listen to the god in your. I have no idea where my grandson was coming from when he told me I couldn't save the world but he could. After all, I had lived my life thinking I could save the world. I hope and pray I live long enough to see him and his generation save the world so very much in need of saving, for sure, there is no doubt in my mind adults cannot save themselves let alone the world in their delusional neo-colonial pursuit of Globalism.
--Marvin
5/6/18

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