Create Your Own Vision for What Mother's Day Should Look Like

Its always been a significant source of humor for me that the moment you question whether people think for themselves in this society, people immediately and completely take offense.  No one wants to be thought of as following someone else's plan for how they live their lives.  Yet, there are examples all around us that clearly demonstrate that very few people really do any concrete thinking for themselves and the way so-called holidays are carried out in this society is textbook curriculum to make this point.  Without knowing any history of the day.  Without even bothering to create our own context for the day, most people in this society follow along with the dictates of this power structure for what days we celebrate, when we celebrate them, and how we celebrate them.

Today is Mother's Day right?  Who choose the second Sunday in May?  Who decided that the method of honoring mother's is to take them to brunch, buy flowers, etc.?  If you ask me, the whole thing sounds like a set up by corporations because at the end of the day, they are the ones who come out on top.  As I'm writing this, the restaurants, candy stores, and flower shops are booming with business.  Yet, we all do all of our thinking for ourselves.

Of course, none of what I'm saying in any way suggests we shouldn't honor our mothers and if that is what you are taking from this, you are a poster child for the point I'm making about not thinking for ourselves.  We should not only honor our mothers, but we should have a completely different definition of what a mother actually is.  Clearly, its much more than just a biological unit who has born children.  A mother is a person who nurtures human beings and helps them reach their fullest potential.  A mother isn't the personal property of her children on this day, she is a valued and respected member of the community she helped nurture and develop.  And, that value cannot be expressed through how much money is spent today.  It can only be expressed by how this mother is honored daily.  

Clearly, with this expanded and much healthier definition of what a mother should be, we are not just talking about women who have born children.  We are really not even necessarily talking about just women.  And, we certainly aren't just talking about someone who raises their biological children.  We are actually talking about the people who advance human society.  That's who we should honor and we should do so by showing them respect everyday and definitely, we should honor them by working daily to improve the world they nurtured us to participate in.  

I fully realize that no one wants to deal with the definitions I'm putting out here because they require much more commitment and morality than just paying a bill once a year at a restaurant or flower shop.  And, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the restaurant and flower shop.  What's wrong is that we have permitted the value of mothers, even if you just want to see it as your biological mother, as being reduced to just simply providing material recognition for human sacrifice.  This is the very definition of how capitalism evaluates human beings.  You are just a reflection of how much money needs be tossed your way.  Yet, we are thinking for ourselves alright.

As usual, the objective here isn't to ruin anyone's capitalist dominated day.  It is to hopefully get us thinking a bit about how we function because doing so helps us get to the point of understanding the root causes of much of the problems we face today.  So, the suggestion here is use today to make a commitment to not only your biological mother, but anyone in your life who has played the role of nurturing and supporting you.  And, if you don't have that person, start thinking about how you can nurture and support someone because that's the quickest way to develop a reality for all of that to come back into your life.  Make a pact to build regularly with that person/s going forward.  Decide what that will look like and how you will keep that flame lit.  Then follow up and do it.  Imagine if all of us did something like this.  Not only will we cease being pimped every month by having to spend money on whatever imperialism tells us to spend money on, but we will be building deeper and more true connections to the people in our lives who positively impact us.  And, by doing that we will be building deeper connections within the entire society in a way that teaches us what really matters in life.  By learning this we will start to understand what is worth fighting for.  When we get to this point, we may find that a lot of the problems we sit around today wondering why they exist (especially since we are doing all this thinking for ourselves) can be resolved much easier than someone has led us to believe.