To Have An Opinion & The Grapes of Wrath

When I began feeling the call to write again it started because I found myself either not having an opinion or unable to form one, even though if I had to stop and think I would most likely have one.

Survival mode does a lot of things to your brain.

And one thing that I have experienced is the lack of critical thinking.

I could do enough to strategize what was needed for a client, or plan my kids always full schedule, or figure out how to get by this month.

But there was a very large gap in the space between how I used to think and how I was thinking in that time. The gap is still there, and this is one of the ways I am working on it.

I considered finding journaling prompts. I wanted something that would induce critical thinking, no so much self reflection. I do enough of that through therapy and faith. Potentially writers prompts...

So if you know of a place, drop it in the comments!

I have found myself exercising some of that critical thinking as my sister and I read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Being an Okie myself, with great grandparents that I grew up knowing, who were born in the mid-1920's, this book has been on my read list! Additionally, I'm from McAlester! The penitentiary, among other things, I believed shaped the environment of my town. So to say this book is close to home would hold weight.

I am only in the beginning of the book, just finished chapter 6 as I write.

I find myself wishing I would have paid more attention in school, specifically history. I was unaware that in those times, the 1930's... someone I knew and lived on the earth with, who drew breaths of the same air, was living while we still had a tenant systems that I thought were left behind with the independence of our nation. With paved roads and motor vehicles, and all that had been developed.... and not so far removed from what is currently developed, even before the 2000's and digital age. I was shocked. Baffled. Bewildered.

I feel the need to insert here, "we listen and we don't judge"! haha my life was a mess when I should have been learning this in school.

So, first, my thoughts are reactional along with the story. How unfair it is that person or persons, an institution, like a bank, that seems faceless, could take advantage of those occupying and working the land. In all the ways that matter, that is their home. Generations at this point have lived, worked, birthed, and buried there. And now, because some removed person looking at numbers and not human beings, sends others in to remove those people. Yes, that is not kindness and doesn't seem much like justice either.

There's a thought there about justice... maybe to explore another time.

As I began piecing together that this tenant system is how those families are on that land, that they did not own that land, but even the while they were working it, and living and dying with it, still some other person or persons or faceless entity owned the land... My heart shifted a bit for the families.

Still not in agreement about the current happening, but seeing that these people still had their hearts investing in something that was not theirs and that kept them poor and hungry.

Please, and history buffs or people with a better understanding of the working of the land at that time is welcome to chime in and educate and correct where there is error!

I began to think about the system as a whole.

If the tenant system didn't work...

And if the bank owning, machine replacing human system worked even less than...

What is the answer?

And that my friend is where I leave you for now. Sitting with me, contemplating, what is the answer?

There is mention of the failed system in reference to the prison system in these early chapters of the book too.