I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable; I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. -- Walt Whitman

There's a cartoon I remember seeing when I was a very little girl, back when there were three television channels, not counting, what was it -- UHF? A little cartoon man walked around singing the same song again and again. It was his song, you see. It lilted up and down the scale, and was clipped on the ends:

La La La LA! LA!
La La La LA! LA!
La La La LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA
LA LA
LAAAAAAA!!!!!!
(Repeat)

He sang it in the grocery store. No one listened. He sang it on the street. No one listened. He sang it at home. No one listened. He sang it at work. No one listened. Finally, someone must have heard him and gotten really annoyed, because I remember a Tom and Jerry kind of pounding that took place on the little black and white television screen, in which the little man was killed, or at least beaten silly, because he was left splayed out on the street with two X X s where his eyes had been, and that's cartoon language for done in. What did that cartoon mean, I wondered? I've never forgotten it. I've pondered it for years.

I Think Walt Whitman Said it Best. Yes, we all have a "Mighty Yawp" inside waiting to come out and be proclaimed to the world. Yet, what is this "Yawp" that Whitman spoke of? Of course, it's your true, real self fully accepted and embraced, owned and claimed. All things within both good and bad seen in an equally accepting light, faced with courage and with the light of truth.

Sure, none of us is perfect and I'm no exception to that. I certainly have my own share of faults, flaws, shortcomings and character defects and these are things that I work on in myself daily.

One of the odd things that I've realized over the years is that people in general tend to present themselves in one or two ways; the one way is in which people try to present themselves and be what they think others and society tries to impose on them. This is generally true among conformists and others seeking general social approval for the sake of what's euphemistically called "popularity".

Then there are the other, far more rare kind of people who, seeing artificiality for what it is, choose to reject that and seek instead their true, inner selves; the people that they really are.

Yet, the question remains for all; who are we, really? How do we find out? How can we tell what's "real" in us and what's not? Read it all.

La La La LA! LA!