The Wisdom of Mark Twain

"Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul"

- Mark Twain

     This quote resonated deeply in me when I read it. I was lazily reading the book Healthy Eating Healthy World by J. Morris Hicks one evening and this quote hit me hard. The wisdom of Mark Twain is alive and well today in 2020.

      How many of us are still carrying the baggage of our parents, grand parents, and great-grand parents anger, hatred, and ignorance? Why is it so difficult for us at first to venture out from the beliefs we grew up around to find our own path and our own thoughts? 

     For me, it took college and many new friends from all over the world to open my thought processes further than my provincial Long Island upbringing. It took working in various places and becoming friends with people from all walks of life and experiences to broaden my mind. Then it took years of therapy for me to look at the way my parents raised me. I examined both the positive and the negative, without feeling like my parents needed defense. 

     The most glaring question from all this self reflection, realization, and enlightenment was: Did my parents even know why their parents raised them to think this way? Can anyone expound and explain their thinking with sound reasoning? Or is this just "the way we have always done it"? Let's move backward systemic racism for a moment and move into: why do we always assume our children are up to "no good"? Why was that always the fallback? If I were reading a book or coloring but yet I was quiet, the assumption was that I was up to no good. Forget the inference that boys are trouble makers, what about: I trust my kid?! The first step was mistrust. 

     When every family member asked my parents how many kids they had the answer was always: Oh my God! You must have your hands full! 

My parents had three sons. 3. Not an invading army or a litter of sixteen dalmatian puppies. Three sons. The inference was: What a nightmare! Three noisy, misbehaving boys! But we weren't that at all. Sure, we wrestled, fought, and argued. Every sibling does that. I know many families of all girls and a mixture of boys and girls who had much more of that then we did. My parents didn't trust themselves to raise us without rigid strictness. I understand why they liked order and quiet in the house. Every parent who is working hard all day deserves to come home and relax, not be referee. But why not trust that they had already raised us that way?

     Continuing, everything my parents taught us by example or verbally began with mistrust that we would understand and be able to complete a task. Why? Because we were boys and boys don't listen? Where does that come from? They could never answer. Where does that leave us? Not being taught faith in ourselves and our minds from the beginning. 

     Clearly, I have found my way. This simple example is illustrative of how a basic tenet passed down for centuries is not only harmful but baseless and useless. I was never so insulted as a kid as when a friend of my Mother gave her a plaque that said: There is a Special Place in Heaven for the Mother of Three Boys. My response: There is a Special Place in Heaven for the Sons of Jane and Jack Cottone. It did not go over well. However, I was very hurt by the inference of that plaque. I took it down every time I walked past it. 

     Why was this ok? Because it was a joke, it's funny, etc. In truth it just perpetuates the myth that we must have been HORRIBLE children to my parents and made them work so hard. I am just going to leave that there with a side eye. 

     Magnify this to all the unrest and lack of social justice existing in the world today and we have to ask ourselves: Why do I think this way? Where did this certainty come from? Why must we all be so defensive when asked to explain ourselves and our thinking? It doesn't matter if your great-grandparents thought this way, chances are they had no idea why they thought this way either. As the world is on the cusp of great change, we have to ask ourselves: can I explain why I think the way I do? 

     All boys are not mischievous.  Now take that and challenge your thoughts about every other concept you have ever had. What do you come up with? A smarter, more balanced version of yourself. We have to reflect on the people who taught us when we were infants, toddlers and beyond and then reflect upon the people who taught them ad infinitum to understand this quote. What petrified thoughts can we release and grow from? If we start with the oldest patterning we can remember and then challenge it, we start to free ourselves and develop our own unique thoughts on the world. I can list a bunch of cliche petrified thoughts, but we all know what was passed on to us without further goading. If you have any thoughts or comments upon reading this or reflections of your own, I would love to read them.