Cartoons Can Teach You A Lot About Life
It’s been years since I’ve watched TV but I was on the bus the other day and what I saw reminded me of a cartoon I had seen on the television when I was a kid. From an adult perspective, the cartoons of my era were “funny” but very violent. There was one cartoon called Tweety-Pie and Sylvester. Tweety-Pie was a yellow canary and Sylvester was a black and white cat. Sylvester was always trying to catch Tweety-Pie and eat him. Sylvester was always sneaky, darting in when he thought no one was looking to try to get a free dinner. Sylvester would always get caught and get rather beat up in the process.
As I watched two children, a boy of around 11 and his younger brother around 5, I could actually watch Tweety-Pie and Sylvester in real life. The older boy would poke at the younger boy, who would pinch the older one really hard. Then he would look very innocent. The older boy would scream out and hit the younger boy. The mother would catch the older boy hitting the younger one and he would get into trouble.
Too often in life we follow patterns of behavior that are taught to us. Obviously, the older boy had not been properly prepared for the arrival of his younger brother. Preparation not only includes telling him that a new baby is coming but also that he is not being pushed out of a favored spot. There are now two favored spots, both of them equally loved and recognized. Teaching both children to have a voice, to speak up about what they need to say with the parent actually listening is so important. The older boy didn’t have a voice. He was being trained to be a victim. If things didn’t change, he would grow up to be an underachiever with low self esteem, taking in silence whatever life dished out to him. The little one is learning to be sneaky and manipulate situations to suit his needs and desires of the moment. He too, cannot communicate in a genuine fashion and will twist his world as best he can.
Yes, cartoons can tell you a lot. How many Brutus’ do you know? Remember the brute in the Popeye cartoons? You know, that extreme type A personality, intense, workaholic who is ready to take on the world. He is always a hair breadth away from pounding the tar out of someone. If he’s out of luck and Popeye comes along he gets the stuffing kicked out of him. In most instances he picks on those he perceives weaker than himself.
As a society in general, in North America at least, we don’t condone violence. The Brutus’s of this world need to take anger management courses or at least learn how to communicate with people with respect. Have you ever had a boss who’s classic answer was “It’s my way or the highway”?
Then there’s Olive Oyle. She is that helpless damsel in distress who takes whatever abuse life gives her. She can’t survive in the world without a hero to save her. She needs the drama to get attention and to prove that someone loves her.
Wimpy on the other hand has a hamburger addiction and is obsesses on getting the next hamburger, no matter what he has to do to trick someone into loaning him the money. He is doomed by his addictions.
Popeye on the other hand was this straight up star. He was so honest that his conscience would not let him stray from what is right. When he would get in over his head he would always stop and observe what was going on. He would always contemplate the situation and then realize once more, that he needed to draw strength from his spinach. What is the spinach in your life?
Popeye’s most poignant insights would always come at a time when he was in deep trouble. He would think about what he needed to do to find his motivation to go on. He realized that it was OK to have faults and yet have intrinsic goodness and strength of character to know what the right thing to do was, especially when “the right thing” was on the line. Even though he didn’t have much eduma-cation, and he was a bit crusty, he was essentially a good man with a warm heart. He knew that he didn’t have to be perfect to be loved or appreciated.
So eat your “spinach”, whatever it means to you and revel in the knowledge that life is OK. It can be particularly awesome, if you let it…Popeye does.
