License

11.15.06

My daughter attended a children's theatrical performance on a school outing the other day and was given a small credit card sized coupon that reads: "Dramatic License: This license guarantees the holder, Hanah, the right to be creative, at will, anytime, for the purpose of remystifying the process of learning. This license expires only when you do."

I love this idea of reminding ourselves that we all have a part of our being which needs/loves to re-invent. As children we play, act out scenarios with twigs and leaves, create worlds in different dimensions, slather ourselves in fantasies and then build castles out of popsicle sticks. I am continually enchanted with the stories they conjur up and the imaginary play they engage in when technology and TV are not available. Our minds can be one of our most amazing playthings, tending us through the horrors of concentration camp, the isolation of prisons and the pedestrian travails of everyday life.

This world we live in is bombarded with temptations, options, distractions, messages. Our brains must process thousands of inputs daily as we go about our lives; more so, I believe in major cities which attack us with billboards, taxi and bench ads, roaming messages on the sides of buses. There is so little quiet in an average day. I wonder if in processing all the chatter, we put our cerebral play-doh away and forget how to use it.

I am discovering in my new work, the joy of being more and more my playful self in teaching. We cover difficult topics and there are as many distinct personalities in a class room as bodies. Some are always seeing the bright side; some the dark; some are asleep with their eyes open. This week we discussed sex as a good form of exercize, which all are sorely lacking, and the laughter rolled like waves across their laps. Was it from discomfort or relief that we could acknowledge the subject that drives so much of human behavior? Who knows. But I am aware that I gave them permission, license, to even consider the role intimacy with self or another can play in everyday life, in our need to connect with our sensual sides, the side we relied on so much as newborns.

I wonder when we take away a child's permission to explore the world with their mouths, their hands, their curious little bodies. When we slap a hand away from something dangerous, or keep our homes so spotlessly clean that a child's immune system gets not robust workout, or say "dont' touch" a 1,000 times, waht are we teaching? We have these wonderful tongues and fingertips that were designed to give us information about tastes and textures (a baby puts things in its mouth no so much out of hunger but more to add taste to their textural explorations). Tantric retreats seem to emphasize re-learning how to touch, rather than sexual technique. Some of us learned how to be "touchy=feely" or huggy from our families, others never experienced an embrace from a parent or loved one and now as adults don't know how to receive or give one. They simply weren't granted license to use their bodies as a modes of expression.

License. Permission. Authorization. Who gives it? Who asks for it? Why do so many of us deny our inner actor, artist, musician, dancer, craftsman, mechanic, lover? When does that God given right to "be all we can be" get buried or stolen? How can we re-new that entitlement when it expires? I often wonder if TV has taken place of the hobby, the pasatiempo, but found when I asked my class of 18 what they do to be creative or relax in their spare time, only 1 mentioned her telenovelas. Others either draw, knit, pot, socialize, golf, woodwork, exercize or read. I asked them to think of something they would do, in any given moment, if they could, as an alternative to eating. Some of them shared, mentioning dancing, sex, being with friends, taking a long, hot bath. Instinctually, they seem to want contact in some way for which food has been a substitute.

"LIcentious" means without restraint, being sexually libertine or lawless. But holding license is to adhere to the very rules with which our licensing authorities caveat our privileges. Interesting twist on words. License to drive, to practise medicine, to marry. All are permission slips to do what we need to do in a safe, pre-contemplated way, having practised and studied in preparation (well perhaps not with marriage, but that would be a good idea). I wonder when/how the word permuted from the noun to the adjective, loosening its stays along the way.

Next time we take out our wallets to pay for something, why not look at that plastic card which entitles us to drive and imagine it as license to live life to the fullest. What would we then dare dream or do?