Familial Monikers
I love that word - “monikers”, just had to use it even though a simple word would have sufficed. From the moment we come into this world we are identified not only by our given and family name but also by familial terms - daughter/son, sister/brother. wife/husband, mother/father, granddaughter/grandson, grandmother/grandfather, aunt/uncle…Then there’s the “hoods” - sisterhood/brotherhood, motherhood/fatherhood, childhood - and the age related identifiers - tot, youth, teenager, junior/senior, matriarch/patriarch. We even have terms for the different generations. I have discovered that I belong to the Silent Generation. ???? Silent? Hmmm, not sure that’s descriptive of me.
Where am I going with all this? Bear with me, I’m old enough to have a meandering mind. The familial moniker I prefer for myself is “elder”. It seems more noble than the word “senior”. There are dozens of sayings with regard to respecting your elders (earned or not) and elders are supposed to be wise. I like that. Experience is a good teacher and elders, simply because they are old, have lots. In my 80 years I’ve seen a lot of science fiction become reality, and found truth in the adage that history repeats itself.I’ve come to believe human beings are flawed, living in today’s world with a brain that’s failed to evolve beyond tribal times. There are billions of us now. Our striving for dominance over one another, over the natural world - it’s simply not sustainable. We strive for wealth and the power it brings, but maybe we should redefine wealth in a more altruistic way. I celebrated my 80th birthday on the same day I attended a memorial for a well loved community member. Looking around the hall, listening to the folks who will miss him, I think I can say that, in many ways, this man was truly wealthy. So, also, am I.
I’ve wandered through my day, trying to put into words what’s going through my mind. Then I remembered a beautiful, insightful poem I once read. Delving into the internet I found it! The tools we have at hand these days are amazing. I both embrace and fear modern technology and scientific advancement… but that’s another story.
Please take the time to read
The Calf-Path
by Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)
One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bellwether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bellwethers always do.
And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made,
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ’twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed — do not laugh —
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street,
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed that zigzag calf about,
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They follow still his crooked way,
And lose one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.
