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Opinion Column
For the week of November 1 through 7, 2000

The boy on the Ferris wheel

Commentary by JOELLEN COLLINS


I spent the weekend of Oct. 6 in Southern California visiting with college friends at a reunion. As a parting gift one of the women gave each of us a bookmark inscribed with the following quotation by the noted feminist author Simone de Beauvoir:

"There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence meaning—devotion to individuals, to groups or causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work…One’s life has virtue so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, and compassion."

I noted with some rue that a member of my Eisenhower-era generation would use a feminist quotation. We were teenagers pre-pill and pre-women’s liberation; most of us kept our bras when others were burning theirs; and most of my friends remained in marriages forged just before the sexual revolution changed so many of America’s social mores. We majored in subjects that were "safe" for women, such as teaching or nursing. UCLA even had a home economics building replete with the latest in appliances and model rooms for young women to practice the virtues of domesticity should they acquire an MRS. along with their B.A. degree.

So I thought it neat (now there’s a ‘50s word) that the quote was by the author of The Second Sex. As I read the words again, however, I was struck by a singular oddity--the use of the word "indignation" in the context of inspirational entreaties to value humanity. The word seems out of place to one raised in the time when expressing anger was taboo. I learned that it was inappropriate and unwomanly to argue, even to disagree (especially with a man). I was to be a gentle and nurturing mediator at all costs. In my childhood home we studied the Bible. Whenever my father read from the section called the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God," all heads turned my way. My mother claimed the words were written with me in mind. I was the designated peacemaker, encouraged to stop arguments before they started and certainly never, ever, to express de Beauvoir’s "indignation."

While I reaped rewards for pleasing people, there was a negative side to that behavior. I learned to be unassertive and often deceptive, acting as though I agreed with people when I didn’t. During the years of the Vietnam War, at my in-laws’ often-volatile family get-togethers, I would generally keep my opinions to myself. Others would be taking carefully-considered sides on issues such as the draft, and I would remain silent, horribly uncomfortable at the thought that loving people could disagree, sometimes heatedly, over dinner. I stifled any outrage I felt.

A more careful reading of de Beauvoir’s words puts the term "indignation" in context: We are to value life by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion. Thus, one needs indignation in concert with those other emotions to continue valuing life.

It is not strange that this country’s civil rights movement was put into high gear by the image of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat in the bus. Many who were apathetic before her action were indignant at the thought of her indignity. Likewise, the dehumanizing act of hosing down demonstrators in Mississippi, as one might wash away dirt from gutters, stirred the same reaction. Any mother knows that indignation at the perceived mistreatment of one’s children is close to the surface, probably put there by nature to ensure the survival of the species.

At the reunion my friend Jan told me of her brother-in-law, who always had "an empty space in his heart." He died recently, unhappy and alone. She explained that her husband’s family adopted him when he was 6 years old, shortly after he was abandoned. One weekend his mother took him to an amusement park and put him alone on a Ferris wheel. She left, and he made dozens of rounds on the wheel before someone noticed no one was waiting for him at the bottom.

That image haunts me and inspires in me not only sadness but also indignation that translates to a desire to do something for the lost children of the world. Whatever the emotional baggage of the mother, whatever her mental state, no child should be left to that fate. (She showed up years later, so there was confirmation she left him deliberately.) Children shouldn’t be discarded, and babies shouldn’t be deposited in dumpsters or ever brought unwanted into the world. Now what I choose to do with my dismay is the challenge.

We’re talking about justified outrage, of course, not petty anger or the kind of irrational rage that springs from warped perceptions. And while I still dislike expressing anger or confronting people, I do hope I will continue to be touched by assaults upon the innocent by forces over which they have no control. Only through being open to the plight of others and by reacting with a sense of outrage or indignation can one keep a youthful sense of compassion.

There’s nothing wrong, I’ve decided, with having a bleeding heart, as long as it inspires me to take action.

 

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