LABELS

BY DOVE

Anumber of years ago I was in a seminar with Dr. Richard Bartlett. It was a Matrix Energetics class and one of the people that was presenting had been a VP with a large pharmaceutical company. She explained to us that the company had developed a product but had no market for the product they had created. The question became how do they sell this product and recoup their money. They decided to create a new problem called ADD. They did not make enough money giving drugs to kids with this created new malfunction of humanity, so they developed ADHD. At this point the person could not be in integrity with herself and she quit her job.

I ask, how many individuals have been affected by the labels placed on them for a problem created to market a pharmaceutical product. How do kids learn to handle their energy levels when they are never allowed to experience them due to being drugged out. How do you learn to focus your energy when you never experience who you truly are. Has society come to a place where everyone must march to the same range of frequencies in order to have the accepted, regimented behavior? It is hard to be different, but what if the energy level you came in with is meant to cause an advancement in abilities or advanced creativity? We miss the opportunity of experiencing the true person.

When I was growing up, there was no TV. We were outside playing ball, creating forts, putting on plays, running, riding bikes. We could only play after chores were done. Consequently, we did not have clogged-up excess energy that needed to be directed.

I have a friend whose 10-year-old son was put on drugs for his behavior; they finally institutionalized him in Salt Lake City. My friend came to me and said she wanted her son back. She made the decision to take him out of

Last week, I sadly noted the passing of one of my favorite entertainers of all time, Harry Belafonte, a human not only of remarkable talent but of great compassion and wisdom. I thought, ironically, about three singers whom I was able to hear as a teenager in Southern California, and, quite suddenly, the mellifluous tones (including “l”s) of their names resonated: Belafonte, Nat King Cole, and Ella Fitzgerald. I had a few moments of gratitude for my youth in a time when these artists flourished.

I can unashamedly don rose-colored glasses to remember the artists who shaped me, even in my more conservative generation. I heard all three of these singers while sitting down fairly close to them in The Greek Theatre. That venue was just THERE for us: inexpensive, cozy, and located at the edge of Griffith Park, the audience enjoying balmy summer evenings before the influx of population and smog.

When I felt romantic at my high school dances, held in our self-decorated gyms, I could recall the expression on Cole’s face as he reminded me of the thought of young love. Even though those sweet visions weren’t necessarily fulfilled in my grown-up life, I still feel a warmth of tenderness and comfort when I listen to those artists. Lucky me, to have been a teenager of that time, with a loving family, and loyal and funny friends who piled into my old heap of a car to drive to Hollywood in our best clothes to see the latest movies at the Pantages or the Egyptian or Grauman’s Chinese theaters. In spite of the tensions in the outside world, we maintained an innocence which I treasure… schools and churches were sanctuaries, not killing fields, and we could believe, even if only for a few years, of the sweetness of life that I imagined lay before me.

Lovely lullabies to those long-ago artists.