Although I can’t recall the title of the book (it may be Personhood: The Art of Being Human) by Leo Buscaglia, I can recall one phrase from within it that has stuck in my mind for a couple of decades: “Don’t walk around in my mind with your dirty feet.” Of course, this phrase was actually from Mahatma Gandhi: “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”
I also recall that at the time I felt the book to be rather sappy and out of touch with the real world as it existed at the time. It seemed to be a highbrow second attempt at being a flower child. Drop your gun and pick up a daisy. But is the other guy going to drop his—and at the same moment to assure instantaneous influx of peace and love? Did I really want to be left standing clutching a wilting daisy while someone pointed a gun at me? For in reality, only the law-abiding citizen is going to obey the law. The flagrant abuser of laws doesn’t really give a shit whether there’s a law or not.
But that phrase, “Don’t walk around in my mind with your dirty feet,” meant something to me—perhaps not even what Gandhi or Buscaglia in quoting it meant it to mean, but as a free thinker, I could interpret it any way I wanted. In a sense it could encompass the good with the bad, useless, negative or just plain silly stuff that people need to unload upon us (and vice versa, as I am guilty too, especially in this weblog as well as with friends). The good comes in food for thought; a generous helping of stick-to-your-ribs informational oatmeal that is meant to fulfill but sometimes ends up sitting in the pit of your stomach for days. Like oatmeal, the bland taste, innocent of the brown sugar or maple syrup of details leaves one wanting something more. One spends the day wandering around nibbling at this or that seeking flavor, as thoughts form around the nucleus of an idea to form a giant pistachio-encrusted cheeseball when all you really wanted was a chocolate cookie.
In the end, without an end or answer, we’re left with that cheeseball that seems to last forever in the refrigerator section of our brain. Half-digested, distorted by occasional cracker-swipes, it sits there for us to see every day, it’s bright red cherry eye staring accusingly from the shelf every time we open the door to grab a quick bite to think.
Don’t walk around in my mind with your dirty feet. Don’t leave tracks to follow that will lead me onward to the center of the forest striving for the unanswerable question when I’m busy picking daisies out in the field, a lady’s S&W in my hip pocket in case the bad guys don’t want to pick their own.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology