Hickory, Dickory, Dock
For what ever reason, this little silly childrens' rhyme pops up in my mind. The trouble with things like this is, they reverberate in my mind like some old song of years gone by. At first I thought their might be something behind this little rhyme that I should consider. Isn’t it strange that some senseless limerick we learned way back then just won’t die? I can remember when our children were still infants Barb would recite stories or sing songs that were taught to her when she was a child. Unfortunately life isn’t a fairy tale and “once upon a time” never really existed. But in our minds, as we grow older, we seem to want to remember a time that truly was when growing up in that land of “milk and honey.”
So where am I going with this. There are some things in life that’s hard to explain. Give you an example, if you were in New Orleans this past week you celebrated Mardi gras. It was originally meant as a day for confession just prior to the start of Lent. (And I suppose that there are many people that needed to confess after that night was over.) In this kind of adult playground we hide behind a false mask so that we can let our inhibitions run lose. It’s that Jekyll and Hyde thing. College students have to have that “spring break” for about the same reasons. They don’t want their “education” to interfere with their “studies.” So now we can see the two sides of our human nature. There is the side that needs to remember “Once upon a time” and a side that says, “Walk on the wild side.”
Now I see a need for a way to keep a balance between the two sides, call it a hobby, recreation or religion, a way to keep reality in its place. We need to know where the middle ground is to help keep us sane in a world that is in turmoil. It’s just how far one goes on either side that can lead us into trouble. If we keep ourselves in the “once upon a time” side, we put reality aside. If we walk too far on the “wild side” we lose sight of realism.
If we look to TV and the internet and the newspapers we see more sensationalism that has become the reality of life: Wars and rumors of wars, pestilence and unemployment, national debt beyond any human understanding and belligerency beyond all belief in our political system and finally (?) sex, a multibillion dollar industry.
And maybe that’s my point, in this fast and furious pace of life we have created for ourselves, we need to find firm ground to hold onto to balance this thing we call life. For life, as we are coming to know it, seems like it’s headed to Hell in a hand basket. It becomes each of us then to find firm ground in an otherwise world of thick, slimy, smelly mud.
Hickory, Dickory, Dock, the mouse ran up the clock, saw the time was late, ran down to meet his fate, to hide in fear and dread, poor mousy now is dead, Hickory….Dickory….Dock.