Badfish

Sublime's Badfish song was released when I was 18 years old. Since then, I've had it stuck in my head along with most of the other songs on their 40oz. to Freedom album. This is a fun album. I never thought anything else about it, except what fun! That is, of course, until I started singing out loud in front of my son. Suddenly, I had questions. I had concerns. I had objections, many objections. I no longer thought it was just fun. It took me seeing the album, the songs, the lyrics, and the messages through the eyes of a mother to see the whole thing differently. That is what it took to understand. This is what it takes to understand something more profoundly, to not accept without questioning, to evolve our thinking–it takes a different perspective.

I think about what we take at face value, our attitudes, our rigid opinions, our prejudices, our hatred, and what we encourage. Songs advocating drunk driving, sexism, and invitations to violence parallel attitudes of racial discrimination, religious intolerance, and domestic violence learned and never questioned. Our unquestioned beliefs seep into every area of our lives. They affect the friends we make, who we hire, who we vote into office, who we help, what we accomplish, what we promote, how we raise our children, what we tolerate, how we treat the planet, how we relate to others, how we worship, how we speak to others, what we dignify, who we victimize through legal (even if unethical) policies and jurisprudence, what we believe ourselves capable of doing.

It takes willingness, openness of hear and emotional growth to challenge our conditioning. Unchallenged beliefs can create blocks for us, conflict and inappropriate actions and reactions. Challenging them can open us up to opportunities, blessings, miracles, better relationships, healthier habits, kinder and more compassionate behavior and powerful change–for us and for others.

Today is a good day to start challenging long held beliefs that may be causing us conflict, hurting others, and damaging our emotional and ecological states. We may start by asking ourselves if those beliefs are absolutely true. Can we see them from another point of view? We can also think of what we are afraid of and question those fears as well for they are the basis of many of our attitudes and reactions. How could our lives be better if we relax the judgments and assumptions we have formed based on our past conditioning? Let's bring mindfulness to what we chant blindly. Let's bring the light of consciousness to what we believe for what we believe affects how we feel and behave and what we accept, allow, support, and encourage.

Image belongs to robidesigns.com.

© Millicent Maldonado and www.soulcerer.com. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.