Today I heard Diane Dupuy speak. She's the founder of the Famous PEOPLE Players. Her topic related to the thought du jour (quite literally), Character Community Day. October is for inclusiveness. How fitting.
You know how I love to hear about people who overcome obstacles, about the underdog coming out on top. This was one. Nearing the end, she commented on how values aren't taught to children as much as they should be, sometimes not even at all. In that absence, children learn values from TV. Or I guess, if you're not paying attention, they learn their values from us, but not the kind that we wanted to pass on.
Normally, having become politically aware in the Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown era, I cringe at hearing the word 'values'. I think of the conservative, holier-than-thou thought police who want you to go away if you think a woman's right to choose, is just that, her right. It's not inclusiveness, but exclusiveness.
You know how I love to hear about people who overcome obstacles, about the underdog coming out on top. This was one. Nearing the end, she commented on how values aren't taught to children as much as they should be, sometimes not even at all. In that absence, children learn values from TV. Or I guess, if you're not paying attention, they learn their values from us, but not the kind that we wanted to pass on.
Normally, having become politically aware in the Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown era, I cringe at hearing the word 'values'. I think of the conservative, holier-than-thou thought police who want you to go away if you think a woman's right to choose, is just that, her right. It's not inclusiveness, but exclusiveness.
But that's not what Diane meant. She was talking about values in the sense of having value for yourself, your talents, and what makes you special and unique in this world. She was also talking about having value for the talents and specialness of other people. Having compassion for their hurts and validating their needs. Being human.
One of the stories that she told that I found particularly good was her recollection of being in school and seeing one of her classmates have a seizure. The rest of the class just laughed and pointed at the kid. Alternatively, during one of her first puppet performances, ironically (or perhaps divinely) to a group of people who happened to have mental disabilities, the group ran to help on of their own having a seizure. She said she then thought to herself, who are the people that society really should be calling "retarded".
I love how she brought something into existence that validates and makes alive the dreams of a group of people who were once (and unfortunately still are) shunned. I love how when a person is doing the thing they are meant to be doing in this world, when they are able to fulfill their dream, all the other labels and dis-abilities just fall away. I guess that's why PEOPLE is capitalized.
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