Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 14, 1994 TAG: 9408170047
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KATHY P. DAVIEDS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
We grew up with terminally embarrassing hand-me-down clothes, and generic-brand peanut-butter sandwiches five days a week in brown paper bags that bore no resemblance to the shiny, TV-character lunchboxes of our classmates. We grew up without the spending money to go to the movies or even out for an ice-cream soda with friends.
Rarely did we go on vacation, and certainly never to summer camp. While friends played tennis, went skating or shopped at the mall, we played outside with sticks, rocks and other free implements of destruction, or went to the local library to stock up on reading material. I recall how friends, who could easily afford the 50-cent swimming admission fee, would sneak into Requa Lake through the unguarded woods with me, who could not, to minimize the danger of one youngster traversing deep woods alone.
Thus, when my parents asked the big question early in my teens, "What do you want to be, what do you want for yourself?", my swift response was "to be regular. To be like everyone else". With their high aspirations for us to be doctors, lawyers, scientists - any profession involving collegiate achievement and a secure, above-average income - they were mortified to the point of anger. A child of theirs uttering such foolishness!
Today, of course, I myself am mortified to think I ever harbored such notions; in any event, friends would certainly attest to my failure at the goal of being "just like everyone else."
In fact, we were rich back then. And while I have no wealth of amassed material belongings (or even extra spending money) now, I know this neither is nor was a barrier to happiness, contentment and inner peace. My soul is in the fullest way it can be: rich.
Historically, the drive to "be like," to be a fitting member of the group has been an instinctive, adaptive survival mechanism. It is also human nature, particularly of the not-yet-matured. Only after basking in the security derived from a sense of belonging can many individuals take steps with potential for making them stand out from the group.
A similar principle may be noted as it applies to towns and other collectives. When all around itself a town observes other geographical entities with things it lacks (particularly if the entity is larger, which unfortunately equals "better" in our society), it tends to succumb to natural instinct and strive for that which will render it securely like its neighbors.
Ironically, while we try to educate and enlighten children regarding the inherent and abundant values to be found in different societies, cultures, ideas and institutions, we forsake our own rich distinctions and variations in pursuit of safer homogeneity. We pursue the more comfortable, but character-annihilating "blend." Somehow, "Merge Right" is cozier than "Use All Lanes".
Were most parents forced to distill a lifetime of advice to but a few principles for their children, one likely would be that our biggest mistakes in life - those that carry permanently the greatest regrets, remorse and anguish - are the bridges we incorrectly burn, the doors we erroneously shut forever. These precepts are emphasized in parental efforts to guide young adults in decisions regarding when and with whom they will engage in sexual relations, and to clarify the implications of, for example, a criminal record or careless behavior with potential for causing loss of body parts or functions.
Rare would be the parents who would advocate prostitution to their financially strapped daughter. Adults know well the despair of value/virtue forfeited forever. Or they should - even those in a most beautiful, special small town to which people traveled from near and far to see and experience a unique, outstanding character and tranquility absent in the rest of the homogenous, duplicated country.
Unfortunately, economic conditions in this town were depressed, which only tends to increase the drive for security. Thus, in the face of objection from within, the town succeeded in the difficult (but increasingly common) aberrant behavior of self-rape.
Floyd County, you are "safe" now. You are on your way to becoming genuinely and certifiably regular, to having all those things everyone else under the sun has. All this, and "progress" too! You had an unparalleled richness most can never have again. It made people seek you out from far away; your superlative reputation was renowned.
In weighing these assets against your purity, your freedom from incarceration and the health of your body plural, you saw yourself poor and pursued that which you thought could help change that. Silly goose, you closed the door.
Floyd County, you have your Hardee's.
Kathy P. Davieds is a Floyd County veterinarian.
by CNB