It's About the Children

seven-generations.com

Euromaidan 2013 could not have a more important agenda!  At first, the whole protest movement seemed to be about the people's anger with the government fumble in not signing the EU Association documents as was planned, promoted, advertised and celebrated all over Ukraine. Of course finances come into the question but there is more.  The young democracy emerged from its empire, feudalism and colonial serfdom relatively recently.  And the nightmarish embrace of the past is trying voraciously to devour the opportunities of the future.  Some of Ukraine's "bear-ish" neighbours, spawning many like-minded "bear-cubs", have persistently asserted themselves into the very thought patterns of this young nation.

Given a good reading of the Ukrainian psyche, it could mean that the children are anxious, feeling bullied and worried about family members themselves. Ukrainian folklore and literature is full of these themes. Know yourself, observe and know others, work around obstacles, don't react, guard your self esteem, recognize your significance, help others, speak truth to power, recognize insults as childish, use wisdom and laugh to restore perspective. But nightmares of past atrocities, past injustices, past incidents that prevented self reliant actualization have dogged Ukrainians for a long time.

The long list of persistent stress-ors that have impacted on the Ukrainian agenda are signals of serious problems that need healing. Every caring person, Ukrainian or otherwise, wants to contribute to their children's better future, to give them the tools for engaging the world in a powerful and satisfying manner. Everyone wants their children's success, happiness, and peace. And most wise people know it "takes a village to raise a child", "nobody is an island unto himself".

Ukraine's international diaspora has had the distance, time and opportunity to infuse its children with values, social and historical understandings which create pockets of Ukrainian identity. Crucially, those of us children, raised in the "little villages" around the world have a positive sense of self, identifying with ancestral homeland in a myriad of small and seemingly insignificant ways. Our aspirational neighbourhoods have shaken any vestige of economic or feudal bondage to our past, and this is the envy of people in Ukraine.

Euromaidan 2013 has coalesced in its emotionally resolute, ethical stance to correct the strategic focus of their government's work, from chumming with thuggish neighbours, to creating vibrant, healthy communities, economically healthy neighbourhoods and healthy friends for all their children's children.

The Happy Magpie

Kaniv amk2013

My daughter recently laughed while calling me a "hobby Ukrainian".  I instantly got the impression she was humouring me for the intense delight Ukrainian stuff gives me.  I get the impression she thinks I am like a magpie, gleefully picking out the sparkly bits from a pile of refuse - but I am a happy magpie.

Kaniv amk2013

Sparkly things call out to me.  I get such a kick out of the simple reminders of happy times, call it a nostalgia for the romantic things that tug at my heart strings.  Old friends,  comfortable with a soft reference to a common experience that forever changed our life path.  We could have been "other", but for some reason, over wide distances and across time, we carry a bond, a love of ancestral things, maybe it is simply love? Family isn't just who you grew up with, for me at least.  Family is the people who have contributed to my world view - to my romantic, rose-coloured lens view of Ukrainian stuff.

Living the diaspora experience is living "without" - hopefully living with economic opportunity, but sadly having to leave the ancestral places, the soil in which great-great-great grandparents stepped, living with a snapshot picture of the ideal past, the ideal present, the ideal future.  Really, it is living in a time warp.  A person living away from the ancestral homeland cannot possibly live in one reality while living completely in another place, but for Ukrainians world-wide, ancestry is like a gift of time - time in a bottle.

Kaniv amk2013

So in my private life I enjoy the "hobby Ukrainian" things, stuff like reading the runes in an embroidered scarf - trying to figure out the magic in the message.  Sometimes I look at Ukrainian ceramics, pysanky or other art and try to understand the symbols, the birds, the ram, the colours.  It is like I am trying to figure out what the person creating the art work was thinking, because I know artists think differently.  Some artists think in words, some think in art, some think with their hands, their bodies, their voices, others pass on a phrase or idea that has been passed on for generations.  Other boldly try to shape the world to match their vision of how it should look! How to enjoy the small things, within the big things, and still understand the huge things? How it all connects?  Try to soar above it all, and pick up the sparkly bits! You never know what you might find?  Maybe, like me, you might want to take some of the sparkly stuff into your everyday life just for fun!