Dr. Suess' brilliant book "Oh, The Places You'll Go" should be required reading at each new stage of life. For kids it speaks frankly to their sense of being at once exhilerated, terrified, bored, and overwhelmed by the whole host of emotional experiences that fly at them like a missle in a 3-D movie.
For teenagers it perfectly illustrates the emotional/spiritual roller coaster that life is, and the whiplash-like speed with which outward and inward change comes. For college-aged people it highlights the impasse reached when restlessness and the weight of big decisions merge.
As adults we move in cycles through all of Suess' "Places", but we do so with a whole armor of defense mechanisms, and while carrying a heavy load of baggage. For us adults the scary places, lurches, and bumps don't always come as so much of a surprise as they did when we were younger and more inexperienced. But they can often cause deeper, subtler, longer-lasting pain since we don't always have a grown up to kiss our boo boos, take us in their arms, and soothe us with a comforting conversation. Sometimes adult suffering can't be soothed with a simple kiss. As adults the voices we attend to are sometimes comforting, but more often than not the messages we hold onto are the more critical ones.
Too often we are subject to what 20th century psychologist, Karen Horney (pronounced Horn- I), called "The tryanny of the shoulds." When we're holding onto all those morally perfectionistic expectations, each new "Place" confronts us not only with the challenges and obstacles inherent to that place or stage in life, but also with the burden of our grown-up second-guessing of ourselves. Dr. Suess refers to just this kind of struggle saying, "I'm afraid that some times you'll play lonely games too. Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you."
Suess describes life as "A Great Balancing Act" and warns to " just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And NEVER mix up your right foot with your left." As advice goes, this may seem kind of lame and insubstantial relative to the size of life's mountains. In fact, though, it's some of the best spiritual advice anyone could give. In other words, Know yourself, know where you are, know where you stand, but be flexible. As adults we tend to leave behind the fundemental wisdom of our childhood books, forgetting that between the rhyming phrases and wild illustrations are spiritual diamonds in the rough. Sometimes the best life-advice we can possibly hear is this, "be your name Buxhaum, or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea, you're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So...get on your way!"
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