"Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized." - Margaret Atwood

I love this quote. I love the idea that little girls, or big girls, or anyone, for that matter, are more than just their beauty or cuteness or charm. They are not what we make them out to be by the way we relate to them. People are not the roles they play. They are individuals who happen to be in a certain role.

People are not pets. Even pets are not pets. Pets are animals. They are only pets insofar as we treat them like pets. The word "pet" refers not to a person or animal, but to the way a person or animal is related to by a human being. In other words, "pet" refers to the role a being plays, not the being itself.

I am not a nurse or a daughter or a wife. I am a packet of existence enclosed in a human body who plays the role of nurse, wife, daughter, or even woman.

Or am I?

Is it in fact the other way around and I am created by my body, female, and my roles of woman, wife, daughter, nurse? And do these then generate the sensation of raw awareness and existence?

Which is the real I?

I think there are two schools of thought here, the spiritualist, which believes the former, and the materialist, which believes the latter.

Does the truth lie in a middle way? A sort of cooperative, symbiotic creation wherein the spiritual creates the material, which in turns generates the spiritual? A sort of positive feedback loop?

I rather like that idea.


PS: Pass the doobie.