Doing and Thinking

I think that individuals are capable of surprising changes, including improvements, in their beliefs. If my father were alive today, I believe his views on marijuana would change, just as he changed his mind on the subject of homosexuality. When I was a boy, he was a big homophobe, referring to gays as "perverts" and probably worse. He never invited any gay person over to his house and had no gay friends. All of that is ironic, because his son was gay and would have turned out better if things had been normal rather than paranoid and ignorant. At the age of nineteen, when I came out to my father, he decided to educate himself on the subject of homosexuality for the first time. He read books and discussed the subject with others. His views underwent an alteration for the better.

I had a dream of my father last night. I dreamt that he searched my room, as he always used to do. It was his favorite pastime, rationalized as necessary, due to my typical teenage vices of cigarettes, alcohol and pot. He boasted of confiscating my vaporizer. I then pointed out that A.) the thing cost over a hundred dollars, and I really didn't appreciate having to buy a new one now, and B.) I was an adult now and in fact I was his equal, because I supported myself and was independent in every way. Moreover, he was elderly, and it was I that looked after him, rather than the other way around.

For item C, I pointed out that everyone with an education had by now accepted that marijuana was, well, not necessarily health food, but a medicine, and certainly not any more dangerous than alcohol, or for that matter, aspirin or coffee. My father was a learned man that liked to read magazines of the world's opinions and discoveries. In 2016, the truth is out there, for those that wish to listen. My father sagged his shoulders and said, "We know different, now. I was mistaken about this, and I am sorry. I concede to Science." Because Science was his God. And science has spoken about the medicinal plant, a gift to mankind. He apologized for having confiscated my vaporizer but had already destroyed it.

Perhaps in a way, my father's spirit was apologizing for all those searches and seizures, for all those angry scenes, a pointless parade of imagined parental duty. People do tend to act automatically, like robots, behaving in ways they have been programmed to do, rather than pausing to consider the merits of things. Perhaps there isn't always time or energy left over from doing to indulge in much thinking.