Emotions about Michael Jackson are so
intense on either side. Most of MJ's fans choose blind adoration of
the man they call not only The King of Pop but The Greatest
Entertainer Of All Time. Jackon's non-fans on the other hand are set
on nailing the laundry of his flaws to the wall for all the world to
never forget.
In this cross fire of emotional
outbursts we may miss the important lessons contained in the
classroom that was Michael's life and in his death. So let's step
back a little from the extremes of "Michael was a god" and
"Michael was a child molester" in the interest of learning from
the influences of this human being who spent half a century among us.
Lesson 1: No matter how gifted
your child is, let the kid grow up. It's not all good for a kid to be
plunged into stardom at age 10 or younger. Yes, the money is good,
but the pressures of the spotlight can permanently take some of the
glitter out of the young shining star. Who knows what a better, more
rounded human being MJ could have become had he been allowed by his
parents to first be a kid? Sadly, many parents continue to push their
gifted and talented kids in the same way that Daddy Jackson taskmastered
his youngsters onto the world's music stage.
Lesson 2: As vital as it is to a
child's upbringing to have a father in the home, it is better for a
child to be raised by a single mother than to have the wrong father
figure in the home. I respect the fact that Mr. Jackson was a
hardworking husband and father. And we can honor his desire to be a
disciplinarian, but intimidating and beating fragile little bodies
and minds into submission until they fine tune their singing, dancing
and other musical skills is just not the stuff that good parenting is
made of. It is not fault finding to say that Daddy Jackson may have
been singularly responsible for the bizarre personality that Michael
Jackson became.
Lesson 3: Discover yourself,
identify yourself, and accept yourself as early in life as possible.
Michael was the boy that never grew up, the black man that never fell
in love with the "man in the mirror". Much of his weirdness was
wrapped around MJ's inability to know and accept who he was. He
rejected just about everything about his blackness, except for his
musical creativity and craftiness. Then when he got the white skin,
face and nose that he so craved, he apparently didn't like the new "man in the mirror"
either. Before he could "remember the time" to learn that "it don't matter if you're
black or white", he had to "beat it", for he was already "gone too soon", never able to be black or
white.
Thus MJ lived and died "stuck in the
middle", for in the world outside of "Never Land", there is no way to be "black and white"
besides being born to a biracial couple, a privilege reserved for the likes of Barack Obama.
There are many other lessons to learn
from MJ's brief life. These three simple pointers should get many of us thinking
about how to approach the matter of managing a gifted and talented child, especially when the magic surfaces very early in the little one's life.
