Murals and What They Make

You must be mindful what murals you paint on nursery walls. Consider your lullabies closely. Be wary of every bedtime story. And most specifically, pay close attention to what mobiles you hang above your infant’s bed. 

Those are the first concepts to surround the child. The first song he hears, and the first story he understands. And the mobile is the first in a very long line of things that will hang over his head. 

Be careful. 

Some fathers paint walls with war spectacles, sing anthems, tell tales of bravery, and hang sharp little ideas over their son’s head. When the child becomes a man, then, he is a conqueror. He rises up and overcomes with war in his eyes and anthems in his lungs and those same sharp ideas hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles.

 

Some mothers wrap gauze around their child’s walls and spread glowing stars across the ceiling. They sing pastorals and and tell their little girl fairytales. They hang a floral ring above their sleeping infant, envisioning some angelic halo. And when that daughter grows up, she becomes a chaste lover with honey on her lips and stars in her eyes. That halo, of course, becomes the tight horizon of her life, the bounds of her universe. 

When the lover and the warrior meet on the battlefield, she either falls as his victim or rises as his saint. Ignorant of surrender, he either conquerors as a hero or dies as one defeated and disgraced. 

In knowing history’s just account of the future, each mother and every father should remember that the last battle’s sunrise filters in through nursery windows. 

Every child has a war already set in their heart. 

It doesn’t matter what weapon you give them, their demise comes all the same. No matter how you paint the nursery walls, they will still be marred by shadows. 

Come, sit and listen. Learn what you may about shadows and saviors. Be very attentive. For your nursery has already been set. The final battle has already begun. 

Your war is very much upon you.