The optimism is contagious, isn’t it? Or is it just me?

 

Listen… I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker when it comes to Dr. Seuss. The feeling of overwhelming nostalgia alone is enough to make me whip out old yearbooks and sigh thinking of years gone by. OK, in reality I don’t even know where my yearbooks are and I’m pretty sure that elementary school was too traumatic to recount, BUT that’s beside the point.

In this, the month of his birth, I feel as though it’s only appropriate to pay homage to this man, Theodor Seuss Geisel, as he is less commonly known. A man whose world of topsy turvy is only comparable to one we might see after a particularly rough night of drinking. And even then, I’m still not clever enough to imagine wockets and grinches and turtles named Yertle.  But then again, few are.

Perhaps we could all benefit from an increase of Suess in our lives. Personally, I could handle a higher dosage.

That could be us, eating exotic delicacies in a house with a mouse. Or to make it a bit more Kosher, how about some lox in a box, with a fox of course. His effortless whimsy is catchy, isn’t it?

As it turns out, our world isn’t as eccentric or curvy as his, and most unfortunately, our daily conversations are not peppered with rhyme. Maybe we’re the ones that are doing it all wrong? Maybe in Seuss’s eyes there was nothing obscure at all about the abstract settings and characters he created. Through each published story he was able to allow us a brief glimpse into his world and maybe at times, even ask us to apply his effortless amusements to our own routines. 

 

However, we no longer buy into the notion of being as invincible and carefree as the characters in Seuss’s stories. Instead, we became realists; boring, preoccupied and prosaic versions of who he asked us to become! What happened?

With the brains in our head and the feet in our shoes we were supposed to steer ourselves any direction we choose. Unfortunately, mine didn’t exactly lead through fields of pastels or past toppling towers and glorified archways (however, it has encouraged me to use colored font, which is a step in the right direction…) And once the book closed, we were forced to snap out of our daze and return to reality, where elephants didn’t parade around on roller-skates and cats weren’t uninvited rowdy guests, but instead, dormant house pets.

What if we chose to live in this world of absolute fantasy, where upside down is right-side-up and nothing or no one is too outrageous to be real? Maybe if we all just took ourselves a little less seriously, we could find our way back there without having to physically open up the book and flip through its pages. In the meantime, we’ll remain standing up straight, but perhaps if we tilt our heads occasionally we could get a glimpse of the world as Dr. Seuss would have wanted us to see it.

 And will you succeed? Yes! You will indeed! 98 ¾ percent guaranteed!