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Do Your Chores

written by T.J. Phoenix

Do Your Chores

Written by T.J. Phoenix

As the mother of six children, doing ones chores is a subject we deal with in our family on a daily basis. Fortunately four of our children are older and somewhat wiser, so things are getting a little easier in our own home. But... it was a hard won battle. Hard won, but well won.
Still, it doesn't hurt to go back in time a bit. Knowing what leads up to a thing, can help in understanding its' importance.

We'll start with my daughter Kyrie, whose favorite "tactic" for ignoring work was as simple, as it was brilliant. Ignore the work. Ignore the work was best illustrated by the layout of the experience. Said child would be assigned a task, and I would go on to do other tasks. I would return and no movement would be made on the task. Maybe the broom would move across the room. But that would be it. She would apologize. I would yell. I would do the work, and she would go back to reading whatever "good book" of the moment, that she was reading.

It took years for me to understand just how many books were hidden around any given room. This is important if you understand just how much this girl loves to read. So as soon as I was out of the room, she would sit down, preferably in a secluded corner and ignore the work.

My frustration was deepening over time. I couldn't convey to her the importance of a job well done. I actually found a good bit of piece of mind, when I realized just how endemic it was in the American culture at large.

My daughter would pepper her conversations with comments about how her friends, "only had to take out the garbage once a week." She felt if she illustrated the error of my ways, that maybe I would lighten up on this whole cleaning thing. In actuality this only deepened my sense of what I already was getting a handle on in my own mind. The joy of a job well done, for the sake of a job well done, was a philosophy that was fast disappearing from our society. I wanted to help bring it back, if only for my own family. My family which, at many a crossroad, reminded me of the futility of trying to force change in other peoples lives. I personally find that forcing change only leaves you very tired with a series of "unexplained" tire tracks up and down ones backside.
"What can I do to help," had been replaced with, "What's it worth to you." Market place economics had replaced common sense and an understanding about how reality manifests itself to begin with. Fortunately for me my father (god rest his soul) was a hard and unyielding man until the day he died. He was the old school of the old school. I was raised on Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Mark Twain. I ran a household in high school: responsible for meals, cleaning, laundry and the daily ironing of his suits for work. I didn't like it, but I learned to take responsibility in stride with daydreams and my own hopes for the future.
And, on the other hand, I had an example of the opposite extreme in my mother. She served as a constant reminder of what I really didn't want to become. She idolized Marilyn Monroe, spent my father into bankruptcy three times (before taking all the money out of his bank account and leaving when I was thirteen), popped valium like it was candy, and had no problems spending the weekly grocery budget getting her hair bleached. She loved instant food in packages and getting anyone else to do the work.

My parents were, as you might guess, not a very good match for one another. I choose to make the reference at this time because they are excellent examples of what was happening in the sixties and seventies in the United States. Presented with an increasingly fantastic view of what an American lifestyle could offer many people grew unhappy with aspects of their life, that in retrospect, weren't really that bad at all.

Further insult to injury would be the "latch keying" and institutionalization of childcare and the future of our society, was written in our past. Now thirty years later, these are the parents. This is the prevailing "parent economy" in the United States. Of course, I am not even scratching the surface of a very complex situation. But, if you take these diametrically opposed corners and add media to the mix, then what is playing itself out now is as clear, plain and predictable as it is undeniable.

First we had "pie in the sky" family life depicted in the seventies along side with the continued indulgence and appeasement of the eighties. Throw in more than a pinch of sexual hypocrisy and repression after aids hit the scene in the early eighties and the trenches of the playground wars were decided. By the nineties, with satellite television and decency standards on the decline, we had so much fantasy in our society, reality had become a relative word. Now the word had become shock and extreme. If you question the validity of this, then consider this:
We can walk into any video store in the country and be surrounded by imagery of horror. I am speaking of the genre of horror films. I can no longer take my children to video stores because of what I am doing to their minds by exposing them to "still shots" of someone's sick idea of entertainment. It should be illegal. It is damaging forming minds. It should be in adult bookstores along side other adult material. But no, images of dismembered corpses, guns, mutilated bodies, these images line the stores for any age of child to view and more on the backside if they pick them up. While human bodies and sex acts remain,(somewhat) restricted viewing, violence is everywhere. Whether we like it or not.
Horror films have been epidemic now for thirty years. Is it any wondering carpet bombing other countries is a passé subject at best. Come on people! I really feel that everyone working in the horror industry should really get some counseling and read some gentle "scripture or poetry". Where we focus, is where we live. And so, we create, what is unreal, and in so doing jeopardize the entire future of our whole planet!

It isn't any wonder that sticking our noses in absolutely everyone's business on a global scale has become the accepted entitlement of a lost generation of people… more than one, because the lost people, are the ones breeding.

Which brings us to now and the media machine in overdrive. An overdrive that has little substance or strength. Why? Well it's only one opinion but I really think it gets back to doing ones chores.
Ah… but how does one do ones chores, for what it's worth, or the best one can?

All of us have our own internal evaluations: both of right and wrong and also of our skill capacity. Put those two together and you have a dynamic combination that provide a framework on which basic education can be built.

But it starts with this… my grandfather use to tell me, that "the reward for a life of hard work, was a life of hard work." A thought he (thankfully) drilled in my head. Guided self observation, evaluation and a questioning (not arguing) openness for change can, I believe help if the most hardened of cynics.

It is, at it's simplest, "consumption versus creation". Consumption will lose. In the meantime, how do we begin to address all of this. Isn't it too big?

Nonsense. Just do your chores. Quit whining. If you do the work, you'll see the change. It really is that simple. Sometimes things are exactly how they seem. Especially, if you open your eyes.

It's at this point, I tell my children, "Open your eyes. Look around you. See what your mama does, she how hard your daddy works. You want to raise children some day, right? "

Well now is where the work begins. It doesn't have to be the ending, it can be the beginning. Set the example. Word are cheap. Show everyone, with your actions. Do the best you can. Do the best you can, and at the end of the day, rest. Then tomorrow, do the best you can again. Do this, with a gentle heart, and kind thoughts and each and every day will be just as it should be.

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