Role Models

[cedar_grove]

I am beautiful, I am indeed beautiful:
I am the spirit of the earth itself.

I am beautifu, I am indeed beautiful:
The earth's strength is my strength.

I am beautiful, I am indeed beautiful:
The earth's toughts are my thoughts.

I am beautiful, I am indeed beautiful:
All that the earth is, all that is everywhere, I am.

I am beautiful, I am indeed beautiful.

--Navaho chant of Changing Woman

Today we are surrounded by still pictures of women, models who pose on every corner, every passing bus, every magazine cover. We know nothing of these women. We do not know which of them lost brothers to early deaths, or which were hurt by cruel parents. We do not know which one loves the flashing rainbow and which the thunder. We see them only as visual compositions; we cannot see their hearts.

Such ideas and thoughts came through my head when I read this, ideas for fiction. Stories around the ideas presented in the reading that accompanied the quote. What if we could? What if we could tell those things just by looking at the picture of the model - the picture of anyone? Would this really be a case of the camera capturing someone's soul, or is there something greater at large here... some awakening of psychic powers in the populace at large.

Perhaps I've been reading too many pseudo-science thrillers lately or something, but that really struck me.

We can't, of course... just look at a picture and tell a person's past - what happened to make them who they are today, and yet we put forward these models as influences for our young folk (and the vulnerable) to follow. There's something fundamentally wrong with that. We give outselves airbrushed pictures of perfection to aspire to... and become disillusioned when we fail. Whatever happened to the image of the big, strong woman working the fields, or helping out on the village green, or the community it took to raise each child?

Perhaps that's it... that community is gone, that each of us now lives every man to himself. It's a very sad state of affairs, if you ask me... and even if you don't, it still is.