I was awakened one morning last week by loud, repeated shouts of “Look at me! Look at Me!" I got to the window and saw that it was a young boy of about six-years-old performing dare-devil maneuvers on his bicycle, for a somewhat distracted audience who was not paying close attention to his feats and person.
This group of children consists of five or six members, ranging in age from about three to ten years old. They all live within twenty-five yards from my house and run around the neighborhood wildly without any adult supervision or even knowledge. They seem to be very much on their own and get into whatever adventures and explorations or experiments present themselves. They have a really admirable curiosity about everything, lots of energy and no inhibitions that I can detect.
I always find them to be fascinating but what struck me strongly on this occasion was the great familiarity of the shouts of “Look at me! Look at me!” There was the immediate association to the Republican candidates for President of the United States who have been saying the same thing, although in different words and in their actions. “Look at me!”
I note in this connection how Bernie Sanders absolutely refuses to do the shout, and immediately tells the provocateurs and the audience that it is the issues, not himself, nor who is the greatest nor who is ahead in the horse race, that is important.
There is this fact, that I mentioned in a previous post, that the way one comes to know his or her self - the basic project since the Greeks of “Know thyself” - that the only way we can discover who we are is by taking a point of view outside of ourselves. The only way a point can see itself is from outside itself. That’s very basic, but usually completely dismissed or overlooked.
Children need to have someone look at them in order to find themselves. It has often been noticed that children’s attempts to have someone look at them are dismissed as “just trying to get attention,” and that they find it necessary to get in trouble rather than not to be noticed at all.
I also saw this last week the mother of two of these children - a little girl of about four and boy of five - yelling at them in a shrill, high-pitched voice: “Get in the fucking house!” She then slapped the side of the boy’s head. He put his hand on his head, looked down, and was about to cry and then she said: “Well? You fuck me over like that, what do you expect?”
I know, I know. The whole abuse of children thing is just too much for us to bear so I won’t go on about it.
It seems to me equally obliterating to think of all the reputed, assumed “adults” around who have never grown up and who are still desperately crying out in all but the exact words “Look at me! Look at me!” It’s not just the young man seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth.
