Oberon Unbound

The Rock of Norm Series : III & IV

Oberon Bound

My mother used to take a liberal view of my beer drinking in my youth. I don't know if it was the beer or the marijuana, but I had started to form an attitude about money that was decidedly socialist. I didn't care for it. Sure I thought it important but for the usual reasons … not in a personal ambition to line my walls with oak panels and sit on camel leather sofas.

 

And so when my popularity at the workplace translated into personal favors, overseas travels and BMWs, I was starting to feel somewhat cramped in the life. Job responsibility comes with a heavy commitment to results, the careers of your colleagues and the constant attention to details and work progress.

 

In a climb to the top in a professional situation we adhere to the principle of the best man. We brook no doubts in our skills and understanding about what is best in the organization. We participate in decision making that demonstrates our understanding of the issues … perhaps with a greater accuracy than someone else.

 

But at the top, with no further competitive challenges to our skills we start to stagnate. Edward de Bono calls it the level of incompetency of an individual.  It begs the inquiry into the nature of our motivation in life. Such a content regarding our motivation has a very long arm … extending all the way into our personality, the social priorities and the drive that we rely on to keep going.

 

In the professional life of the man who appears to be pioneering a path in social and economic growth of the community, there comes the thought in the personal natures of the experience of destiny. A person begins to view his relations with the creator forces and forms the simulation of a relation that intimates a joint decision making, of the purpose of our birth and our individual part in creation.

 

It became too much for me. I quit my job and took to teaching … there to take a second look at my motivation. What I found astounded me. Our lifetimes can be a reflection of the motivation of creation itself. Each life provides a window's glimpse into such a possibility. It adds them up to  know and see the self from whence it came. I saw in it my career, my colleagues and the work I was doing. It had been telling me there's more to do .

Oberon Unbound

The Romans practiced a housekeeping ritual that is, on closer study, a marvel of self management. They placed a Christian identity at the door … like a wooden etching of a saint … but the separate rooms in the home were brought into relation with a particular personality depending on the usage. So the living room might be related to Zeus, the bedroom with Venus, kitchen with Demeter, dining with Dion and so on. It's brings an unspoken quality of discernment to domestic issues.

 

The home is the biggest, most extraordinary part of our daily experiences. In it we are undertaking a daily discourse with the spouse, children, grandparents and on the phone with relations and friends. The Roman civil idea identified the activity in the room with a personality and identity already well established in society. It shares that well known nature with the family's needs for greater relational familiarity.

 

The real benefit of the Roman practice becomes clear when viewing the usage of that part of the home that is the bath and toiletry use. In a one bathroom home, this is the place we all come to exposure for our grooming and hygiene practices. It brings a subtle but intense expression to the experience of proximity where the mind of a child makes no discernment in its innocence and considers it a societal validated acquiescence to practice.

 

Such a place would certainly be considered the open range of bison, the swamp of geese or the toadstool of pixies. Oberon is the frozen moon on Uranus and is also the name of the King of the fairies in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. It tells a tale of men turned into donkeys on account of an innocent trespass.

 

As fathers in the home we are the world to children who are only then cultivating the approved vision of their experiences. They learn by observing and bring their practices into the homes they set up some day. We know that from the homes we came from. 

 

The innocence of the nursery … its many pictures of personalities and cuddly toys are a reminder to fathers of the fine sensitivity to the environment that children bring. It should certainly be reflected in every room in the home. In Sweden, parliament has enacted laws on the handling of children in the home since 1979.