hippy marrow returns

Hippy marrow returns

A nephew of mine recently celebrated his birthday. As is the usual custom on facebook friends and family sent congratulations and many exchanges flowed. Now my mind has its own little expanding universe and in keeping with it’s own intra-galactic orbits, black holes, births and deaths of stars, and other mostly inexplicable phenomena it naturally spat out a spontaneous and as usual, a somewhat spooneristic play on words and images that resulted in a birthday message to him that went something like this:

hippy marrow returns!!
instead of just tying another yellow ribbon round the old oak tree
you've managed to lay another ring around the trunk of life
no more barking up the wrong tree now : )
happy birthday dude!!
Lloyd

And then, just as I had pressed the send button my intra galaxy went into its usual wham-bam, bigbang walkabout for an eternal micro second and the birthday wish suddenly exploded outwards in all directions and the simple salutation turned into a wonderful thought process which had me tearing away at high speed like a little human Hubble Telescope. It suddenly dawned on me as I sped past multitudes of other intra-constellations that in these days of global political, social, ecological and economic meltdown we seem to be coming to a very sticky end. Sort of much like tearing down a highway at full speed and suddenly realising that the sign we just zipped by looked ominously like a cul-de-sac warning and not an Autobahn go-as-fast-as-you-can encouragement.
I was born in 1960 so I can legitimately call myself a child of the 60’s but I did not see or experience the hippy movement first-hand. I was too young and also, I was born in South Africa which at the time was having its own little revolution which in hindsight can clearly be seen and renamed as the “Dippy” movement. But I digress a little. From what I have picked up about that wonderful hippy time is that a few dissonant individuals became a groundswell of some magnitude that challenged the status quo and made a global impact. In some ways a Pandora’s box was opened but in many other ways a new way of thinking about things was unleashed and things changed dramatically. Many of the participants in this movement went on to be key players in many strategic fields of life. Great breakthroughs and creative inventions were made, and many are still with us in some form or another today. The pros and cons are for another discussion but perhaps one of the things we can learn from is that a similar situation exists now that was the soil for the hippy movement back then. A system was seen to be failing hopelessly and a few people felt moved to attempt to do something about it. Against all odds action was taken and at the risk of life and limb something started and a revolution resulted. There was a marrow in the bones of many of those hippy’s. Maybe that’s just what we need right now? Where are those with steel in their hearts and purpose in their minds? Where are those prophetic little voices who will spark into flame the beginnings of a solution that evades us all at this point. Stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. It’s got to be fresh and inspired. It’s got to be radical and dangerous. Instead of a feel-good tree with 100 comforting yellow ribbons wrapped around its swelling trunk perhaps the bark needs to be loud and snapping at the heels of corruptive mediocrity and stagnant political wishful thinking.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to read a bold news headline across the face of global media that reads, “HIPPY MARROW RETURNS!!”