Rebels, Patriots & Free Spirits

Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison:

“I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

Later Jefferson, speaking of Shay's Rebellion, wrote to Colonel William Smith what is so-often quoted by every sort of politician:

       “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time 
        to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” 

Three of our younger grandchildren are visiting this weekend. Two are just 11 and one is not quite 6. Their Moms and Dads are off doing what Moms and Dads do ... One set is picking up an oldster Sib at the end of her school year ... 300 miles away ... they stayed for dinner, last night. The other set is off trying to figure out things and hopefully to play; they left before we ate together. The younger one hasn't spent much time away from both her parents and was simultaneously looking forward to bunking-up with her "big-girl" cousins who adore her and was terrified of being without Mommy and Daddy. The "big girls" are no-longer-identical twins but have always had each other's backs and much of the time enjoy bringing Little One along into their activities.

Little One began crying a bit and Grandpa got out the funny pictures ... the albums that had snapshots of Daddies and Aunts and Uncles when they were young ... when they had funny faces and haircuts .... and pictures commemorating the Prime of Grannie M and Grandpa Howard when he was still a haired swashbuckler. Don't get me wrong ... Grandpa may have had as much hair as Errol Flynn in Captain Blood but ...

       "Howard ... You were never an Errol Flynn."

Little One was pretty good at identifying these earlier forms as who they grew into ... found it kind of humorous and eventually fell asleep to the stories told by Big Cousins.

But back to what I arose thinking about ... another kind of Once Upon a Time. There was, once, an immigrant Hot Chick named Margaret Mahler ... a pediatrician who studied children and, at the same time, made the stodgy old men of her time a little nervous because of her free life style, free, at least, for a woman in Post WW2 America. Mostly, though, she studied the two Big Forces of the Universe. There was the Centripetal Force of Attachment that drew us human folk to draw near to each other and, then again, there was the Centrifugal Force that made it safest to maintain sufficient distance to continue to see ourselves as Individuals with a unique Identity.

A Mom may say to Little One: "Hey, put on your coat and let's go out for some ice cream." The Little Kid trying to hold on to who s/he is may well respond: "No," all the while putting on a coat and walking to the door. Balance ain't easy!

Mahler was most interested in studying the 18-40 month old kids who were locked into this tension between these two forces, as they attempted to build a comfortable orbit around the adults who, at the same time, were still necessary for their existence and simultaneously a danger to their unique identity. Margaret was studying this at just about the same time that the Russian and American Space Engineers were trying to figure out how to get little capsules -- manned and unmanned -- to attain a balanced orbit around their Good Earth that gave them life. It was tricky business. Send these Cosmonauts or Astronauts too far out of Earth's Gravity and they were Lost in Space. Keep them too near and they would be sucked back by Earth's Gravity and end their journey at Crash Sites. 

Margaret and her fellow researchers concluded that these little kids faced the same kind of Cosmic Forces in attaining a relatively constant orbit about their adults. Two fears dominated them. In the first place, there was the possibility of staying too close and losing who they were. And, then and equally disturbing, was the potential to stray too far and lose the connection to those Caretakers and Beneficent Protectors. She concluded that perfect orbits ... optimal distances ... all these were ideals that would never quite be attained but a certain relative smoothness in these orbits might. She called our attempts to keep our balance in these matters The Road to Object Constancy.

I won't explicitly harp on the obvious comparison with "Rebels without a Cause" or "Blind Patriots" who find no balance in their orbits about whatever Constitution binds them together with their neighbors. Mahler's principle of Childhood Development must, indeed, be a Universal one in both the Physical and the Living Universes. 

Hell! It's even obvious in the Last Quarter of life. You see these old couples in restaurants ... eating together and arguing over the menus ... You see them on the road driving together but sitting in sullen silence ... Some of them come to visit me in my office, wanting to be together but making certain that there is enough explosive energy to keep them just-separate enough. Others come wanting to separate but so clearly need to hold together, even if only by fighting over who gets the dog.

Schopenhauer compared the situation to one that obtains in a porcupine hole on a Cold Night. Without closeness? the terror grows of a frozen and dangerous existential aloneness in the Coldness of the Fourth Quarter. With too much closeness? There is a mutual pricking with sharp quills that cut deep at a time when vulnerability and pain are prominent.

M and I, need I say, never prick each other ... no Porcupines are we!

Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! 
Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! 
Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!
Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! 
Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha! 
Ha-Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!
Ha-Ha!
!