Can YOU Tell Me How to Get (Back) to Sesame Street?

Hello all,

After another week of world-wide madness

-- shattered cease-fires and the imploding city of Ferguson Missouri,  sensationalized but never-the-less heartbreaking celebrity deaths and people hurting each other in every way all over the planet  just because they can--

I've decided to take a step back from it all and get back to my generation's socio-political roots.

Sesame Street.

Sesame Street first muppetted onto our television sets on November 10, 1969.  I was almost 3 years old.  The quintessential Sesame Street age.

Akin to the well-known adage (and book)  "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten", Sesame Street gave me--and my fellow tots--some simple and absolutely true rules to live by:



1. We are all unique and special.

2. Learning is fun.

3. Absolutely everyone has  feelings and needs to be liked, loved and cared for.

4. Try new things

5. Meet new people

6. Everyone--old and young, near and far, famous and unknown--loves to play.

7. Care.

In my head I can see the early episodes of Sesame Street that first opened my eyes to these rules.   These are the same rules I try to model every day for my kids and my students.  

Unfortunately we live in a world that seems to be operating for the most part according to a set of rules that are exactly opposite to these:

1.  We are all the same and utterly disposable.

2. Learning is a chore to be endured

3. Absolutely everyone is apathetic and alone.

4. Stick to what you know.

5. Cling to those who agree with you.

6. Playing is pointless.

7. Who cares?


This is why at least once or twice a week I go on Youtube and I watch a few  Sesame Street shows.  Of course I watch the well-worn, well-known pieces of shows from my childhood. But I also watch  the new imaginings that Sesame Street is creating--delightful spoofs of pop songs and current movies that leave me humming or chuckling--and quite often both.

I realize I'm not solving anything by watching Sesame Street.  
Nothing is ever solved by watching.
Watching is passive.

But my momentary  investments in passivity keep me mindful of those simple lessons that Sesame Street first taught me 44 years ago.  

And armed with those lessons, I can turn off the computer, go out the door and do my best to teach them anew.

Until next time.

It Just Doesn't Matter

It doesn't matter, you know.

This laser-tipped focus everyone seems to have on what defines each of us.

It doesn't matter that I'm a Democrat  and you're a Republican. 

It doesn't matter that I'm liberal and you're conservative.

It doesn't matter what lifestyle I have or support or what lifestyle you choose to despise or accept. 

It doesn't matter that I drink coffee and you drink tea,

or that I see through scientific eyes

and you see through the eyes of Belief.

It doesn't matter.

And it's not worth making it matter.

It's not worth the energy of

Facebook rants

and blog tirades

and newspaper opinion pieces

that keep stepping over the lines

people draw in the sand.

What matters is that we're all  here.

We're breathing the same air,

drinking the same water that flows through the same cycle from continent to continent.

The water coming out of my Japanese faucet will eventually make it's way into your North American coffee or into that desert oasis or  through that faraway plastic hose.  

The air that you breathe in through your righteous nostrils is the same air that

I exhale through my questionable mouth. 

Long after the cursing and insults and hurt feelings have been hurled back and forth,

we're still family,

still neighbors,

still sharing this country

or this continent

or this planet.

Still stuck together.

So does it really matter what defines us?

We are all fantastically different,

from our eyelashes to our political views, 

each cell of mine distinctly different from each cell of yours.

In the end, all this arguing,

fighting,

bomb-tossing,

gun shooting

gleeful hate wallowing

just

doesn't 

matter.