ok so it's a rhetorical question but why do we want her to be a good girl.
A.A.Milne put his finger on it in his Now we are six
It's funny how often they say to me
"Have you been a good girl?
"Have you been a good girl?
and when they have said it, they say it again
"Have you been a good girl?
"Have you been a good girl?
I go to a party, I go out to tea
I go to an aunt or a week at the sea
I come back from school or from playing a game
Where ever I come from, it's always the same
Have you been a good girl, Jane?
It's always end of the loveliest day:
"Have you been a good girl?"
"Have you been a good girl?"
I went to the Zoo, and they waited to say
"Have you been a good girl?"
"Have you been a good girl?"
Well, what did they think that I went there to do?
And why should I want to be bad at the Zoo?
And should I be likely to say if I had?
So that's why it's funny for Mummy and Dad,
This asking and asking in case I was bad,
Well? "Have you been a good girl, Jane?
Question. What to you makes a good child who becomes a 'good' adult, even an ideal nurse? One answer might be..... the one who never wets her knickers. Another is that we are essentially chosen (from a list of applicants) to be dispensers of wisdom, benefactors. We pay the preacher and keep the roof on. So we see ourselves as an ideal person, the ideal nurse. And risk becoming tyrannical. In the response zone below do tell us what, to you, constitutes a good child or, worse still, a nice person. Kipling had it with "our's is not to question why, nor make reply but to do and die" The risk is that we, being fearful of criticism and ridicule, of being seen as a failure, of getting it wrong buy into the tyranny of the ideal, with the threat of shame and disgrace to haunt us when we run out screaming. Becoming Human is an antidote to this depressing drama of let's pretend. We can witih new friends and new ideas slowly recover. So back to the drawing board. |
| Response, what's on your mind |