In Greek mythology, Narcissus looked in the mirror and fell in love with his own reflection, not caring to see the substance of what was reflected to him. His infatuation spawned an array of selfish actions and judgment errors that would eventually destroy him. I love mythology; each culture in the world has its own, and yet sometimes they are so universal that they reflect our own fears and desires.
Among the universal things we share, excessive drinking is the most common- and directly responsible for numerous social problems. If we asked any chief of police in the world, we would be told a terrifying first hand account of the dangers of alcohol. Because of it, police departments have taken upon themselves the responsibility of creating programs designed to educate our children about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.
Unfortunately, while we relentlessly preach abdication, all young people can see is our true reflection in the mirror. We have chosen, like Narcissus, to ignore it, but teenagers in their rebellious years refuse to participate in our charade. They take their cues from our actions. We go around telling them to forgo the use of alcohol, without providing them with a reasonable explanation for the existence of so many profitable liquor stores in every single community in the world. And we shall not mention bars and clubs for the time being.
In contrast to that, we struggle as a society to keep afloat one single library in each community, which seems to satisfy all of our thirst for knowledge. The majority of people in the world have no need for ballet or poetry and opera houses are considered a pastime of the affluent. Ironically, the same people who chastise the so called elite for their patronage of certain artistic expressions, tend to relinquish their prejudice when alcohol is concerned. They have no qualms about joining the high society in making the liquor industry one of the most profitable enterprises anywhere in the world-while, at the same time, subscribing to the notion that we are far apart from each other, primarily because of our economic differences.
Behavior is the blood vessel that delineates each distinctive social class . Most of us choose to patronize a bar instead of going to an opera, to a ballet, to a poetry recital. Drinking doesn’t require any sort of preparation or special garment. There isn’t but a single creative spark emanating from any building that sells alcohol, and it is precisely because the owners understand the mediocre nature of the addictive product they are selling. As members of any society, we are choosing to overlook the image that we are projecting when we get together to lecture our kids about drugs and alcohol. We are simply asking our sons and daughters to overlook our behavior and do as they are told. They refuse it, of course.
Obviously, I am not implying that young adults engaging in excessive drinking are doing so with any sort of an ideological agenda. It is, I’m afraid, a lot simpler than that; our children are a daily testimony to the old adage: “ monkey see, monkey do”. So it’s perhaps not surprising that we are confronted with the televised images of young adults, out there, drinking to the point of not being able to stand up. It is also commonplace to blame parents for all that kids do, though many parents feel that it’s an unfair portrayal of who they are as human beings.
However we may wish to define ourselves, what influences our children most are the activities we engage in when we aren’t working. After we are done with our labor of the day, what do we adults do with the rest of our time? Do we go see a movie? Do we head to the theater to see a play? Do we read a book, or learn a new language, perhaps? Do we sit in front of our television or computer screens? In most cases, we reach for a beer or another alcoholic beverage to reward us for ending another hard day’s work. These are the lessons our children learn. How many officers of the law, after spending the day talking to children about alcohol, end their day at a bar, sharing a beer with their fellow officers?
The media outlets in the world step in and profit from this-you and your children-because advertisement dollars, and not communities' well-being, are their bottom line. The liquor store owners will continue selling to us and our kids free of guilt, for we are responsible for our own behavior. These businesses have a door-wide-open policy, ready to receive us every time we decide to intoxicate ourselves. These establishments are shelves upon shelves of useless products aimed at numbing our souls. I cannot think of another product being sold today, except perhaps for guns, that we humans need less. It’s somewhat ironic that we fight for our constitutional rights to keep our guns and consume as much alcohol as we wish, and yet we care so little about our own education. I’m not advocating closing liquor stores and bars, nor do I aim to vilify the owners of such stores: I am advocating that we adults stop drinking altogether before we advise teenagers of how dangerous alcohol is to their developing brains.
The Narcissus myth is so important because it’s our story. Our struggle to find meaning when everything inside us wants to hide the truth. After all, to become a better person, one has to start by accepting that there is something wrong, and then one needs the courage to strive for change, no matter how painful and unpleasant it may be. Everywhere we look, we are bombarded with images of how precarious our situation is, and how extremely vulnerable we humans are to nature’s wrath and to our own. We are reminded daily of how short and fragile life really is and how we have to work hard for our survival.
It’s primordial that we create an outlet, an activity to lighten our burden. We choose most times to drink with friends, but alcohol should not be treated as entertainment, for it just numbs the soul and prevents us from finding anything of true meaning in our daily lives. Human beings need to connect to one another. We crave spiritual growth precisely because we know that our bodies will perish. So we have our knitting, chess, book clubs, soccer leagues, bird watching, Facebook and Twitter. All of which are created in an attempt to bring different people together in a common language we all share: our need, after a hard day, to replenish our souls, preferably in communion with something other than ourselves. There lies the lesson of Narcissus.
We are not going to convince teenagers to stop drinking until we apologize to them for our sins, for our mistakes. For the numerous commercials we produce to convince them of how cool they would look to one another with a drink in their hands. We have to beg their forgiveness to make it all so enticing and benign. We have to accept our share of blame for sprouting open so many liquor stores in their neighborhoods.
It is rare to find a prettier and more intoxicating environment made by man than a liquor store, with its neatly organized shelves, with bottles filled with liquid of every color. You walk in there when the sun is just right, and you can see the bottles splitting the sunlight into an array of colors so pretty and majestic that one can almost forget the destruction that lies within. I wonder, watching the beauty of it, who are they displaying that to, and how does it reflect on all of us?
