Off to See the Wizard

Wherever you are, you are there.-Buddhist Saying

I always loved this time of year. As a kid Easter in my book was second only to Christmas. Halloween was too scary and the other lesser holidays, (Valentine, St.Paddy’s etc) really did nothing for me. Easter was the promise of a new dress, Easter baskets, furry bunnies and little chicks. What little girl wouldn’t love that? Throw in a unicorn and a rainbow and its really all any girl could ever want in a holiday. The only bad thing in my kid perspective was that every year at Easter time The Wizard of Oz was shown on TV. Because nothing says Christ has risen like a scary witch. I have no idea why they chose April to always show this movie every year but I would start to feel the thrilling panic rise in my chest all the way to my throat that soon the movie was going to be on and you absolutely had to watch it. There would be discussions at school and there was just no missing it since you would be taunted with “YOU HAVE TO WAIT A WHOLE YEAR TO GET A CHANCE TO SEE IT AGAIN!!” There were no On Demand or DVD, heck there were no Beta max or VCR even!! (It was practically Little House on the Prairie times! Our children really have no idea what we lived through.)

Year after year watching through my fingers wondering why on Earth Dorothy just didn’t ask Glinda to stay with her the entire time? I would never leave her side if I were her! Let me in your bubble! I’m coming with you!! Then when she tells her she could have gone home all along but she didn’t bother mentioning that because she knew Dorothy wouldn’t have believed her? Are you kidding me? And Dorothy isn’t even mad! I was outraged for her! She wouldn’t believe you? Try her! If your house fell into a Technicolor world of flying monkeys, witches and munchkins I am pretty sure she would have taken what you said for face value. Dumb witch. I think I hated her more than Green face for the sheer betrayal factor.

I remember one year when it was going to be on being at my cousin’s house and my parents and my aunt and uncle were going out to dinner and the babysitter was coming. That in it self was enough to start my heart beating. My mother and father would not be in the actual house when  scary green  came on the TV? I don’t care if she is the kindly old Good to the Last drop! Maxwell house lady now, she still is freakin scary and I need my parents at least in the home if not the very room that I am in while I view this movie. My eyes were wide as the music started and our parents came in to say goodbye. I admitted to my aunt I was a little afraid to watch it, my cousin didn’t seem phased in the least, which I could not for the life of me understand. (UH, HELLOO?! Green face scariest person ever is about to terrorize this girl and her PUPPY for the next two hours and we have to watch it without parental supervision?!) My aunt very matter of fact said, “Don’t you know the secret to the Wizard of Oz?  (No apparently my parents enjoy my terror year after year too much to let me in on the little secret.) Then she told me, probably what every other kid already new hence my feeling of isolation in my fear, “The Scarecrow needs a brain but he is the one with the big ideas, the tin man a heart but he is the one who needs to keep the oil can handy because he is always rusting up from crying, the lion needs courage but he protects Dorothy and she has her slippers that take her home. They all are already everything they are looking for. Its not scary.”

REVELATION! Oprah ah ha moment before Oprah was Oprah! The relief flooded my body and I watched that year from a whole new shift in my perception. They all have everything they need and they have had it all along. They just didn’t know it.

There have been many books written about the theories, symbolism and hidden meanings of the Wizard of Oz. From the political, (yellow brick road is the monetary system the US is built on and OZ is the abbreviation for ounces which is the way gold is measured.) To the New Age and even Buddhist perspective where everything in the movie from the Cyclone to Toto has a bigger meaning. All of the interpretations are at the very least interesting. Here is what I know…Should Dorothy have let Toto run through Gulch’s garden? No, but maybe subconsciously she needed a catalyst to propel her on her spiritual path. She needed something as drastic as a cyclone to get her on her ‘Yellow Brick Road’ to her truth. And Glinda was right, like any self respecting teenage girl Dorothy would never have listened if Aunt Em said, “Listen to me, I know your living in a black and white dirt farm with no parents but really all you ever need is here.” Dorothy would have told her dear Aunt Em to stick her basket of eggs where the sun don’t shine.

So if not for seemingly the worst thing that ever happened to her, literally getting thrown into another world from a cyclone! Maybe she would have ended up married to Zeke, bitter and unfulfilled. (Like so many dirt farmers in the 30’s were. If only they could have now the real meaning of the story! Enlightenment for all!) Inevitably she was able to change her perspective and saw herself as the whole person that she was meant to be. At one point she even says, “I want to get out of OZ ALTOGETHER” A Whole person. She needed the journey to realize everything she needs is already found not on a farm or in OZ but within.

I think of this story often as my children enter adulthood one by one and I hold myself back from giving them all they ever need to know according to me. Its there Oz now. I’m like Glinda, watching from afar knowing they already have everything they need but if I told them that, they would never believe me.