I’m sure you have heard of the Seven Dwarfs – Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey. But, did you know there was an eighth dwarf in the group? Sure was. His name was Weepy, the taller guy in back on the right. As were the others in the group, Weepy was appropriately named because he was almost always misty-eyed. When Snow White fled to the forest to escape her wicked step-mother, she befriended the dwarfs and took refuge with them. All went well for the group until Walt Disney discovered them frolicking in the woods and wrote a tale about their lives. Unfortunately, Mr. Disney and Weepy did not get along which led to numerous arguments. Rather than dispatch Weepy to the deeper parts of the forest, the cartoonist simply wrote the beleaguered dwarf out of the script and titled it Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I’ll bet you did not know that, did you?
Do you ever feel like life has written you out of the script? No longer a player? Maybe not important? I do. Age has something to do with it, but this feeling is much deeper than the number of years on earth. It’s a pervasive sadness not related to personal turmoil or pain. No, I am not talking about depression or melancholy. I am not the Rock of Gibraltar anymore. What’s that you say? Larry, you never were a rock. Okay, okay you could be right, but in years past my strength has been derived from a belief that we would somehow inexplicably pass on to future generations a better, more tolerant world, a world where love and compassion for humanity would override mankind’s greed and ignorance.
In my lifetime. just a blip on the screen of human history, great advances have been made to ensure the rights of all who dwell here, not just the privileged and wealthy and not only the white and Christian. Women, people of color, gays, the poor appeared to be dawning upon a new era in which all people share the earth together as a brotherhood of men and women.
We seem to be trending back into the darkness of yesterday and that saddens my soul. I don’t like the script and I want to go deeper into the woods.
lpb - quest 