Pubdate: Tue, 11 Jan 2005
Source: Daily News of Newburyport (MA)
Copyright: 2005 Essex County Newspapers, Inc
Contact:  http://www.newburyportnews.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/693
Author: William J. Plante
Note: Newspaper editor's note -- William J. Plante served for four years 
as  communications director of the Massachusetts Governor's Alliance 
Against  Drugs.
Related:

Index -- Special On Opiate Use (Daily News Of Newburyport) --

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n042/a03.html

NOT MUCH IN OUR CULTURE TO  SATISFY THE SOUL

To the editor: I know I am not the only one stirred by your series on the 
crisis of OxyContin and heroin use by young people in Essex County. Neither 
am I alone,  I'm sure, in my gratitude to those who wrote and published the 
series, to fellow parents and survivors who courageously shared their 
stories and to the public officials, especially our sheriff and district 
attorney, who clearly care deeply about our young people.

In calling our attention to the dimensions and danger of this problem, 
District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett has risen beyond his job as a 
prosecutor, reaching out in a way that shows great leadership.

We are fortunate to have his and other voices speaking truth to power, 
power which in this case is truly in our own hands, since we alone have the 
means to  turn things around, though at this point we don't know how to go 
about it. There  is bound to be a lot of discussion and many ideas put 
forward. For my part I  would urge consideration of one fundamental 
dimension of the issue, and that is  what is often referred to as "soul."

There is nearly a complete suppression of soulfulness in our culture. Too 
few of us, myself included, hear or speak of soulfulness, but when parents 
and even  district attorneys weep over lost children, then it is not what 
we know but what  we understand that counts most, and the seat of 
understanding is the soul. Our lives are abundant and comfortable to a 
degree that has no parallel in history. Yet by the soul's calculations, all 
that this material wealth adds up to is emptiness.

Young people, in particular, feel this vacuum keenly because there is 
little that the culture offers "over the table" to satisfy the soul. In 
this regard, facts are as useless as any other material possession, and yet 
we are caught up  in a fetish of facts, of high-stakes testing, of 
competition, of research-based  curricula that leave little place for 
making art, poetry, music or even taking  recess.

With our schools more or less shackled by this obsession and its politics, 
we turn to the parents. But as parents we are caught up in the old story of 
"much  wants more." The notion of "quality time" sounds like the setup for 
a joke: The  soul, unfortunately, does not run by the metrics of our 
daytimers. And the problem is not a lack of soul. We have as much soul as 
we ever had. It's only that there is too much darkness in too many souls, 
young and old. No blame here, but soul needs to mingle with life in order 
to gain balance and share in the light.

How do we do this? We get off our high horse. We teach our kids to sing, 
and we sing with them, even if out of tune. We laugh at ourselves. We 
instigate pillow fights or pond hockey games or cribbage or pick-up 
football on the commons. We eat dinner together and hear stories. We 
practice stillness and try to listen well before we speak, and we show our 
kids by our example how to do the same. We encourage them when they want to 
stand up for a cause, whether or  not we agree with that cause.

This crisis of kids and narcotics is a complicated one. Many points of view 
will lead to understanding. Hopefully, many will be heard at the Jan. 13 
forum at Merrimack College. I only hope that in our soul-searching, we find 
a way to  include soulfulness in the solution.
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MAP posted-by: Beth