For grits and shins the other morning, I clicked on one of those three “Related” links at the bottom of the post that are auto-generated, and I found myself a couple of years back and sounding a little more bemused than I have been lately.
I poked around at a few of my older pieces, wondering who this guy was, when it hit me: I’ve recently lost track of the whimsical. It’s easy enough, with radicals barking on the telly every few moments about how radical the other guy is, to remember about whimsy.
But sure as a new pair of sneakers can whisk you across a small 1928 town before you can say “Jack Robinson,” and as certainly as a good drill will journey you to the center of the Earth and, most importantly, as there’s a door to a magical land in the back of that old wardrobe, whimsy is an essential component of a healthy life.
I knew what I was looking for, and a quick DuckDuckGo search for “Warren Bluhm whimsy” took me straight there, to a 2012 blog post illustrated by a delighted me wondering what Willow The Best Dog There Is™ was doing sitting bolt upright on my lap, titled “I choose whimsy.” No need to go looking, there’s the photo up above, and here’s the post:
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I see and hear the cranky and dyspeptic political tones, philosophical arguments dressed up as a battle between good and evil, and I have seen and heard enough.
“There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys, there’s only you and me and we just disagree,” the poet sang.
And yet the demagogues behind the curtains conjure images of battlegrounds. We don’t just disagree; you are the embodiment of evil walking on Earth. If your kind keeps/retains power, then the rest of us die.
Hogwash. I say again, hogwash. Pay no attention to the demagogues behind the curtains.
My freedom is not dependent upon someone holding or being ejected from office, and neither is yours. Human beings are born to freedom, not granted liberty by benevolent rulers. What part of “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights” is so hard to understand?
We have a choice to stew in our own bile – or in bile provided for us by willing political toadies – or to live our lives freely, joyfully and in celebration.
You may follow the path to fear and loathing and the infestation of imaginary hobgoblins. I choose whimsy.