RAISING REBELLIOUS THINKERS: THE GADFLY'S LEGACY

Teach your Children: Tyranny is taken by force - Authority is given by choice.

Let me just start by saying, you’re gonna die.

Now, I know this sounds alarming and quite frankly unbelieveable to many of you. Clutching your latte to your still-firmly beating heart, you may think to yourself: “Moi? Incroyable!” or some other equally incredulous French word. Nay, I assure you Dear Reader: maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, mark my words -

you are going to Bite the Big One.

Take a moment to appreciate how, in all of Human History, it is adorable how most of us at one point or another believe that death will pass us by, or if it does come, it will be cool and awesome, leaving us immortal in the eyes of our Social Media Followers. That is remotely possible, not to exceed Andy Warhol’s ‘Fifteen Minutes of Fame’; but it is far more likely if you pursue that ‘glorious death route"‘, you’ll just end up on someone’s Darwin Awards List. Instead, Death comes for most of us as an inconvenience, surrounded by mountains of bills and regret.

Breathe in; breathe out. Accept mortality - then decide: what Legacy are you going to leave behind?

Legacies are tricky. We deliberately choose some; a life of service, as FireFighters or Doctors, Warriors on Battlefields or Celibate Monks doing good deeds, etc - but for most of us, our greatest Legacy is forged not as a goal but as a by-product of our ordinary days. Animals rescued, neighbors loved, communities served… the moments that live not on a page, but in the hearts of those who shared our journey. And for many of us, those who share our Journey most intimately are our Children.

Before someone gets all, “white picket fence overpopulation muh patriarchy blah blah blah,” let me casually remind you that the rest of us don’t care. If we grab the Brass Ring for Happy Ever After With Kids, that’s awesome; but marriages, divorces, less than ideal living arrangements and wild flings have resulted in humanity being procreated thoughout the ages. The result are those little Humans we see running around the planet and they are amazing.

People should make more children if at all possible, and I mean “possible” with all sincerity. As a woman coming from a family who wrestles with generational miscarriage and infertility, I have wept tears over the blood, and rocked the empty cradle one last time before putting it away forever. I understand the absolute devastation of the struggle. So if you have no children, you have my love - and you have some, count yourself blessed.

If you have children, what will your legacy be to them?

When my two living children entered my life to stay, I appreciated them… so imagine my shock when the first thing some people wanted me to do was to leave them behind.

“You need to be working. You can’t just stay at home with them.”

No, I couldn’t. This was spoken with Authority by a woman whom I trusted: my Mother. I didn’t have the means to stay at home - we needed food and clothing, and I was a grown woman of TWENTY ONE, by God. So for the first year, I chose to be with my daughter as much as humanly possible, taking part time retail jobs while my Mother watched her. Later, as a Teacher by trade, I sought out schools where my daughter’s Daycare could be near me. This came in very handy when my now-ex husband decided other women were enjoyable.

Despite work, every day after school my mission was the same: to learn what my Daughter learned, schooling her at home as much as she was schooled at school. Every lunch, every free moment, I made a distinct effort to bring myself into my Daughter’s life. Later in life my Son would miraculously show up, and I made the decision to homeschool him, with the support of my Family and his Father…

with each child, I discovered my first and greatest lesson was to teach them to respect others while questioning Authority. I had seen too many lives damaged by people blindly accepting the authority of institutions, governments, and people not worthy of that trust. But how do we teach Children to make that choice?

It starts by us teaching ourselves.

I was lucky. I had a Gadfly for a Father. Descendent of Revolutionaries and Rebels, he was a Rebellious Thinker, constantly questioning everything even from a young age. Pestering Teachers, Preachers and Politicians, my Father took great delight in being the gadfly to those who demanded he respect their Authority, and he passed the lessons of his Childhood on to me:

God is our only Authority - all others have to prove themselves. Just because someone claims Authority doesn’t mean they have it. Authoritarians only have Authority if we give it to them. But when should we give others Authority in any subject?

It is a hard lesson to learn:

Authority cannot be demanded; it must be given. Whether it’s medicine, or grammar, or how to bake cupcakes, people hold themselves up as authorities - and we seek authorities for our questions. But they are our authorities only if we choose them as one. If a person or entity demands we accept their authority, we have a duty to question it.

But what of those who demand we obey their authority?

If someone has a gun pointed at us, we must decide if we want to accept their authority to use that gun. If we want to live, we may choose to accept their authority in dealing life and death - but their authority extends only so far as we let it. Past our consensual boundaries, Authority becomes Tyranny.

Tyranny is taken by force; Authority is given by choice.

Authority is not inherently malicious; it can be beneficial, or necessary in complex situations when we are vulnerable or not fully informed. So we learned Seven Subversive Steps for Questioning Authority:

• Do those seeking Authority ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING?

• Do they have your best interests in mind?

• Do they get compensated by entities that may not have your best interests in mind?

• Are they being coerced by anyone else?

• Are under the influence of unsavory substances or characters?

• Have they proven themselves trustworthy in small things and can they be trusted with big things?

• Do they actually care about you or your issues, or are they just using you for their own purposes?”

Huzzah! Down with the Man! Questioning others’ fitness to lead is fun; questioning our own?

Not so much.

Parental Authority is sacred in most cultures, but we sometimes struggle to establish it, resorting to vague blanket threats as persuasion. Predators exploit this: they know blind obedience is ignorance, and can be easily subverted. They pull out that old tired trick, wolves preying on lambs: “Who gave your Parents the Authority?”

I wanted my Children to say: “I did!”… so I taught my children to question MY Authority.

It was a risk. What if they chose someone else? I knew they could; it happens everyday, children led astray by those claiming to be a better authority than their Parents. Anyone who has ever faced a custody battle knows children are sometimes forced to choose…

So I chose to take the risk of teaching them to question my authority.

I asked my Children to answer each of the above questions honestly. Then I lobbied them to choose me as their Authority, ending with a final, personal question:

“Do you believe I love you? Do you trust me? Am I worthy of your trust?”

I listed the advantages of entrusting authority to me, of how it benefitted them, of how I would make mistakes and when I did I would own up to them. I also told them how one day they would take their own authority, if they trusted me to help them get there.

“But what if I choose someone else?” They asked, all innocence, for they were still children.

“Right now the Law is the Authority, and terrible things can happen to both of us if I don’t follow the Law, like jail or heartbreak. The Law has designated me to be your Authority for now. But when you get big enough, you can choose someone else, or you can be your own Authority. So you better question who you choose, because there are consequences.”

“Fine. Can we go to McDonalds?”

My Children chose me.

In return, I had to live up to their trust. It became a lifelong mission to ask myself those questions, even as I taught them to ask themselves. I had to forge myself into an Authority worthy of following…

and when they didn’t follow my Authority, the consequences bit hard and deep.

I raised Rebellious Thinkers. My Daughter and my Son grew to be the kind of self-sufficient risk takers that other people now claim as Authorities. There were times when those risks were perilous, and their decisions not always right. But each time, through the Grace of God, they were able to self correct -

not because I am the best parent, but because they are adults who think for themselves, bowing only to the Ultimate Authority of God’s Love.

And me? I am an Authority now if they want one; sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. But I know when I am lying on my Deathbed, I won’t be afraid for them, for I taught them what my Father taught me. I leave them the Gadfly’s Legacy -

Be a Rebellious Thinker; question Authority, and become your own.