A conversation with Tony the Tiger’s talented casting agent reminding his fans that he sometimes has people for breakfast. His agent’s contributions are in italics.
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What’s for dessert?
“The Two Faces of Wildness” is about the impact your tiger’s role modeling has had on popular culture. Really? Yes. Turning everyone into a maniac. One face is a nice puddy cat who makes everyone comfy. The other is a crazed monster who doesn’t make everyone comfy. By being rude. What? Burping and picking its teeth with toothpicks after it’s dined on its fans.
Wildness is beautiful when it’s an ideal portrayed by a talented artist. Not so beautiful when it’s set free in the neighborhood to do what predators do. Decorate cereal boxes. Eat the cereal, the nice mommies and daddies who buy it, the sweet little darlings who eat it, and the box. What about the grocer? Store management, employees, and shoppers too. What’s for dessert? A big bowl of Alka-Seltzer, Pepto-Bismol, and a stomach pump.
Leo the Lion’s frosted crispy choco-loop puffs
If that doesn’t tame my tiger nothing will. We don’t want to tame . . . What’s its name again? Tony. Don’t you read cereal boxes? Tony belongs here as much as we do. We just want to keep the predator within – the beautiful ideal of wildness – from having us for breakfast. By managing our relationship with it. Chloroform!
“Power” isn’t control. It’s management. They’re not the same? In situations that require conformity rather than thinking for yourself, the difference won’t matter. Like little kids, raw military recruits – people who need training. Otherwise no. Control comes from the animal side of human animal that doesn’t need mind. Management comes from the human side that does need mind.
In a shared world boundaries need to be respected and relationships managed within as well as without, just as wildness needs to be respected and managed. It’s not cool to cage the beast or to let it go free. Or to imagine that we have the power of a predator to make others let us do whatever we want. Even if we’re the King of Beasts? Maybe there’s a cereal box with Leo the Lion. See if that works.
Calvin’s best friend
I get it. It’s OK to admire the ideal of wildness but not to behave like it. Yes. Better to accept that the only world where we can do whatever we want is one we make up. And to keep our fanciful world where it belongs: in our imaginations and not crossing boundaries and messing with our relationships.
You have your own tiger? The difference between nice and not nice, helpful and not helpful, isn’t between those who have and don’t have a tiger. We all do. Are they like Hobbes? Who was that? Calvin’s best friend, a cute stuffed tiger. Were Calvin and Hobbes your clients too? Until I got bored with Hobbes. He was too nice. I like. . . Never mind. I know what you like.
The difference is between respecting and not respecting boundaries while we’re respecting wildness. Between understanding and not understanding why they’re there. To let the ideal of wildness inspire creativity without crossing boundaries. Our own as well as others’.
It can be hard to stay on the right side. A lot of people don’t. In extreme circumstances maybe you and I won’t. I don’t need to wait for extreme circumstances. We need to be aware of the nature of wildness: that it can be both inspiring and deadly, constructive and destructive, humanizing and de-humanizing. We need to be careful.
Nice kitty!
Maybe these thoughts can help you and Tony balance the two sides of wildness. It does sound important. Very. The good side of wildness is playfulness that’s creative. Because wildness is spontaneous, the gift your tiger was meant to give. Not being the “king” of anything. Not being a beast that must be put in a cage.
Then we should all just stop thinking and let stuff happen spontaneously. No. There’s a right kind of spontaneity and a wrong kind. Getting out of the way to let stuff happen on its own is the wrong kind. The wrong guide. It doesn’t lead to freedom and creativity, just the opposite. The right kind is thinking before deciding that welcomes spontaneous insights. And after deciding but before acting, to give spontaneity a voice in every phase: thinking, deciding, and acting.
Spontaneity is a kind of guide that we don’t want to control because we need its perspective. Trying to control it will kill it. Whether we put Tony in a cage or let him out of his cage we’re getting it wrong. Tony just needs to be understood, with thoughtfulness and patience. To be loved and managed for his and our benefit. Nice kitty. Keep luring little kids to their doom and you can have the run of the closet.