Where are the crickets?

As I recall, the cricket from Pinocchio, Jiminy, is one of the most meaningful fairy tale characters. I’ll remind you that the fairy godmother sprinkles the marionette with some magic powders that allow him to start moving on his own, if haltingly, and become almost human. One of the aspects of his “humanity” is the ability to tell lies, some gratuitous and dumb, others politically or economically opportunistic. Jiminy Cricket, who plays the part of inmature Pinocchio’s “conscience”, cannot keep up with the responsibility and work generated by his pupil’s fickleness. But Jiminy stays alert, active and innovative in his message. In the end Pinocchio is sorry for his actions and is rewarded by his Godmother, who turns him into a real human (God help us! – but the story has a happy ending). Pinocchio, the human being, promises to be good, brave and generous.

Many of us have a cricket in our own consciences, but many of us gag or put ours to sleep in the purgatory of the millions of forgotten crickets. “When in Rome, do as the Romans” and that is how the decadence of the empire, the people, the family and the individual begins. The crickets of conscience are the most endangered species in societies that lose the sense of respect, the rhythm of intellectual nobility and the tenor of the state of grace. Societies flourish ecologically and economically when crickets are free to sing, sigh, and reproduce, proud of their work and success.

Happy endings never last, but they do permit a return to the right path with determination and a sense of achievable and reasonable goals. The world economic recession is a good juncture to save crickets that are either dormant or annihilated by the goddess of success. Yearnings for fortitude, integrity, work and generosity are lasting yearnings that are refreshed and regenerate themselves through the challenge of their own maintenance.

Let us wake up our internal crickets and begin a campaign to recruit external crickets. I have, among my good friends, three first class crickets. If I have doubts and am not willing to listen to my internal cricket, I can simply call up the three external crickets and listen to the quartet (because mine begins to sing clearly and instantly).

Where are the crickets? They are everywhere. Consciences are dormant, but they are never dead. We can start by waking our own. It is important to do so amidst so much confusion and appreciation for what we have lost. What we have lost in the revelry of liquidity and turbo-consumerism of recent years is not as important as what we can gain with calm, will and the help of Jiminy Cricket. Pinocchio is barely starting his life at the end of the story. He can’t imagine how hard life is, especially when we decide to ignore our conscience. Crickets blow the whistle and don’t sing when we ignore them. If we pay attention to Jiminy Cricket, his sounds are calming and far away songs. They remind us of the calm night in the Llanos, or walks through dark but fragrant gardens. They remind us of the infamy of childhood pastimes of trapping crickets in order to feel brave, without realizing that we are capturing something essential in our history: the ability to listen to the sounds of nature as whispers of a conscience at peace.