Miniature Mind Musings #9:

Remember how you found out the truth about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy?

Growth and development.

Quick recap.

You got to a point where even though the free gifts and celebrations were the coolest, you started to ask questions. The answers given by your parents/other adults were initially satisfactory. Seemed logical. They added appropriate props here and there, unbeknownst to you. But you kept growing, and then asking more specific questions. There came a time when those same adults realized that they couldn’t ‘keep up the game’ anymore. You’d developed into one smart cookie and that wasn’t going to stop. And although society is no Santa Claus, and if you’re reading this you probably have no baby teeth left, you might understand the angle I’m coming from.

Some parts of societal living feel completely nonsensical, yet we continue to do them without question.

It takes existential weirdness to new levels.

Believe it or not perceptions regarding this for me started in childhood.

I learned as a youngster that people in other jurisdictions bought water.

The water that fell from the sky.

For free.

I couldn’t wrap my little head around that.

What can I say, growing up without water bills shapes you into a different biological organism. Individual rainwater catchments and cess pits (for waste) still are a standard feature of residential housing back home.

Traveling to the United States East Coast where I had plenty of relatives and family friends, I tasted the water there.

Yuck.

Not the sweet stuff like back home.

Now, I understood why people would buy water, but too young back then to examine the reasons as to how the water became “Yuck” in the first place.

Currently, I live in a geographical location where I have water bills.

It still grates.

I get it that infrastructure is the blueprint of societal living, but hasn’t societal living undergone a transformation on the historical timeline before? Why aren’t we changing faster than this? It feels preposterous!

The same water has been on the planet since its beginning, recycled continuously via the water cycle. And the cycle doesn’t differentiate on this spinning blue ball to delineate France’s water from Finland’s.

“Ooh, some of our water molecules are in there, give ‘em back!”

Sixty percent of the human body is water. Access to water is a human right, but what happens when you can’t pay for it? What happens when multinational companies contaminate water in other countries and others suffer because of it? What do they drink as bureaucracy grinds its slower-than-slow wheels for resolution?

In tracing back to source, who made this water we all enjoy?

Oh, so not those multibillionaire companies then.

It belongs to ALL of earth’s inhabitants.

Then why (for all intents and purposes) does it belong to those companies, and we get to pay them for it?

Of course, it’s a complex issue. Sure is when lots of humans get involved, but it also reeks of those “parental explanations” about Santa Claus/Tooth Fairy designed to placate questions we asked as kids with answers that didn’t sit right.

Stuff just don’t add up.

Neva da raas claat did.

That one element, water, has wide-ranging applicability across societal lines.

What about natural energy reserves extracted from an earth its inhabitants pay exorbitant prices for?

Wait.

The same energy reserves that are depleting the planet that belongs to everybody?

Yeah, I know, I know. Complicated.

But not everything’s a 'complicated' placation answer. It’s mathematically impossible.

There gotta be some things that qualify as downright ludicrously simple (be on the lookout for a list.)

And as with all the games of Red Light, Hide & Seek, and Simon Says that we played as children, there was one rule we all agreed on:

Everybody gets to have a turn.

Somebody been monopolizing without a thought to equal play for all…and we have been letting them.

Me: Hey! Hello? It's us. We're society.

You: ‘Tis true.

Me: What are we doing?

You: *Sigh*

“Oooooh!” and “Arrrrgh!” moments…

I am very appreciative that you read this story! I put a great deal of effort and time into it, so that means so much to me. You are more than welcome to read more of my work below.