Goethe

child’s play for old Salts

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Age merely shows what children we remain.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Playtime

I am taking the opportunity to play again. Watching our grandchild once or twice a week, we have taken every opportunity to go to parks to run with and after him. With nice Southern California weather, time to run through the grass, over the little bridges, and then feed ducks at the lake. As Zander gets a little older,. he more boldly climbs up jungle gyms. Sliding down slides, he directs us to follow after or to catch him – over and over again. Sitting on his uncle’s lap he enjoys swinging on swings. But not that high he says. And as “mam-mam” and “pop-pop” get a bit more winded, we suggest going to get a little frozen yogurt and then to “mam-mam’s” house to play. Even though a pandemic year has stolen time from us all, It is unavoidable that both preschoolers and grandparents still have grown older. Yet it is pretty much a given that clambering around a jungle gym and marveling at child’s play, this old Salt feels younger for a little while.

identity crisis

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Relationships inform you and me whether others perceive us as whom we consider ourselves to be.

While this may be a great starting point for a philosopher or intellectual following Goethe, Erikson, or Jung, in a modern society, your identity is whom you can prove yourself to be. Bureaucracy has replaced oral recitation of your birthright ( e.g., descent of your family or tribe from Moses, Seneca, or Charlemagne). If you don’t have a driver’s license, a passport, a social security card, or another government- produced identity card, how do you prove who you are?

It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.

Jean Baudrillard, 1929-2007, French intellectual (best-quotations com)

It might be unnecessary for the Queen of Great Britain to carry identity papers (there, everything official is issued in her name) but in most every country, everyday life, that is, in one’s financial and legal relations, use identity as a basis for meaningful exchange.

Most who have suffered identity theft, where unknowingly, someone has enjoyed your savings or credit to buy yachts or Teslas, or found themselves wanted in Pennsylvania for fraud ( though you have never left Nevada) are painfully aware that your identity is you.

One must be something in order to do something

Wolfgang Goethe, via best-quotations.com

As someone now engaged in an occupation that is thoroughly entrenched in institutional bureaucracy, valid identification of my prospective clients requires official documents. In a world now telling people they “are” whom they believe themselves to be, in terms of “identity”, these same folks in bureaucratic circles tell us we are whom our documents dictate.