Childlike or Childish

                                                                                                                                                                               
     Being childlike includes many positive traits like being curious and playful.   It may also include finding comfort in being dependent and having an authoritative figure guiding their life.
     Being childish often means not thinking and behaving like others of your age and experience.  Emotional immaturity, lacking self-control, being self-centered and insensitive to others, and being impulsive without considering the facts or the consequences are all considered childish.  Adults labeled narcissistic often get upset when criticized,  blame others for their mistakes, and rudely belittle those who disagree with them.
     Adults can benefit from being childlike at times while still having the self-confidence to prefer independence.  Taking a break from adult responsibilities can actually refresh us so we can return to adulthood.  It would be to our detriment to be childish ourselves or accept childish behaviors in leaders responsible for our well-being.
   
       

Secular Ethics

                                                                                                                                                                                                 
     This pandemic has required us to think about what is best for ourselves, our country, and the world.  We all are sacrificing, feeling compassion for those suffering, and trusting science to return us to better times.  Ethical decisions have been made for our survival.
     Secular Ethics is based on human faculties such as logic, empathy, reason or moral intuition and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance.  Secular ethics has much in common with many religious morality codes.
     The beginnings of ethics can be witnessed in nonhuman animals as they form social behaviors first within their kinships as parents sacrificing for their offspring and continuing as they follow behaviors that benefit their group like sharing food.  Those animals that reciprocate and help each other strengthen the community.  Evolution continued these positive traits in human beings who became more reflective and logical, then designed the best ways to live and set rules of behavior.  Beneficial behaviors were encouraged such as honesty and cooperation, while other behaviors were discouraged, even prohibited.  The concepts of good and bad, right and wrong were established.  Punishments were put into place for the lawbreakers.
     Throughout history, some cultures were sidetracked, created a deeper divide between the powerful and the powerless, instituted slavery, resorted to violence and war, which in some cases led to their downfall.  A few cultures became more democratic, valuing the individual.   Some cultures yearned to understand the unknown and placed value on supernatural explanations.  Religions seemed to produce answers and created their own set of ethics and rules of behavior.  Many myths and stories of heroes were handed down even before written language.
    Today, many people value supernatural explanations which include rules of behavior.  They may believe that human nature is too selfish and misguided to do the right thing.  Others believe that logic and reason can prevail with good parenting and ethical leadership, that individuals can behave well for their own benefit and for the benefit of the group.
    We still have a long way to go.  Secular ethics can guide us to ensure our citizens and people around the world have equal rights and opportunity.

The Yellow House

     "The Yellow House" 4112 Wilson Avenue, New Orleans East, Louisiana from 1961 until Hurricane Katrina damaged it beyond repair was home to Ivory Mae who raised twelve children there, the youngest being author Sarah M. Broom.  This memoir tells the story of Broom's ancestors, parents, siblings, other family members, neighbors, and friends.  This also is a story of place: the development and decline of the community just east of New Orleans and New Orleans itself including the French Quarter, both the romanticized image and the real story of the residents and workers.
     Sarah Broom relates her life story as a young girl growing up who kept a journal throughout her life, went away to college, and had various jobs including as a writer for Oprah Magazine, then as a speech writer for Mayor Ray Nagin until she lost faith in his leadership rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
     "We are all born into histories, worlds existing before us.  No place is without history."  As a teenager she states, "I wrote in a notebook (my writing everything down having become, by then, habit.)."  After living in other places, she rented an apartment in the French Quarter. "Thus it could be said that my reaching to understand the French Quarter was a yearning for centrality, a leading role, so to speak, in the story of New Orleans, which is to say the story of America."
     Eleven years after Katrina, "Mom signed away the yellow house and its land, which she had owned for more than half a century."  "The story of our house was the only thing left."