“Who’s that!?”, inquires Lily of the image in today’s Google Doodle. “MLK? Milk?”
I explain her initials spell CAN, and these initials belong to a man named Martin.
“He was a man who had a family and a mission”, I tentatively begin to explain.
We then talk about what a mission is and how she has missions to build comfortable places for her turtle to feel safe, climb the tree faster and higher, and create a recipe that is something she wants to drink just about every day. Then, she asks why we have an MLK day… and I think, maybe this year, maybe she’s ready…
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We listened to Sparkle Stories, “The Rights of the Lefts” last night. She accepted the story easily enough, but when asked today whether she could make any sense out of one particular scenario, of why someone would think making a painting of a circle with the right hand vs the left was superior, her response was simply, “Huh? What matters is if what gets painted looks like a circle, if you need a circle.”
We continued to discuss the topic from this angle for a moment or two more, as I looked for a way to integrate the concepts that Mr. King devoted so much of his energy to sharing with our world. In the end, I came to the conclusion – not yet, not this year, she’s not ready yet.
My daughter has no concept of why on earth one human would see themselves as superior/inferior to another human, human to human anyway. True, she might judge whether friend A or friend B can climb the tree faster, but the assessment is, most beautifully, assigned to the success/completion of the task, not the person.
We talked about the mission this man, with a family, had. We talked of his abundance of desire to get others in our world to open their viewing portals and challenge their beliefs. We talked about his mission being one of wanting to help our world decide that every human has equal value, every human can choose to contribute benefit, and every human is important. We did not discuss racism, bigotry, or any other ‘ism’ because, well, as far as she is concerned, such things simply do not exist.
Then, she asked if he was still alive, and we calculated how old he might be. I had to explain that no, he was not still alive, and that he had died because someone who disagreed with his belief that all humans are equal decided to kill him. She was appalled.. “Well, that’s stupid”, remarks my innocent in disbelief.
Then, we watched the following video together, and now, I have the privilege of stepping back and observing as my little one knits this all together.
~~ Would that she, and the other innocents who see things so clearly, so evenly, and with such transparence, are now coming into being in abundance, as the result of the energy Mr. King, and others like him, have chosen to give.
– To the mission we all still so very much need. ~~