Did Michael Jackson Ever Get Enough Attention, the Kind He Really Wanted and Needed?
Alice Aspen March
July 02, 2009
Perhaps we shall never know the answer to that question.
He called himself the King of Pop, even though much of his music sounded more like soul music. He designed wonderfully innovative dance routines which were celebrated around the world. He did everything he could to create a family for himself, to have children to father. He struggled to have different facial features and to have a lighter facial tone. Was he just not enough for himself?
One wonders if he ever felt the enormous love that was beamed his way.
Michael was "on" from the time he was five years old, when he was part of his musical family working the State Fair of Indiana. There have been consistent stories through the years about the abuse he suffered in his childhood; his father admits to hitting him with a belt. But his father didnīt think that was abusive. He said that it would have been abusive, if heīd hit him with a stick. Oh?
In life he received abundant attention from people around the planet. He was brilliant, a genius of a performer, an artistic visionary, a successful business man and a very young person in an adultīs body. He was shown to be often shy around other performers and in public; yet, on stage, he was a consummate performer. I find it hard sometimes to believe he was really fifty years old.
He danced and sang his way into our hearts. He composed some songs and wrote the lyrics for others which have received years of acclaim: We Are the World, BAD, Beat It, Black or White, Iīll Be There. He collaborated with Barry Gordy, Quincy Jones and others.
In death, he appears to be getting even more attention. Every day there are more stories, more people sharing their personal experiences about him, more opinions being aired. Heīs currently on most magazine covers, on mega TV stations and all over the radio. There is so much back and forth talk about his drug usage and his lack of drug usage, his continued quest for good nutrition, his continual prescription drug use. What is true? Perhaps he was a composite of all of it.
I heard Deepak Chopra, a dear friend and doctor, who called Michael his brother, talk about the emotional and physical abuse that Michael received in his childhood and how there is now sufficient research connecting auto immune diseases to early abuse. He said that Michael suffered from lupus, a deadly and debilitating auto immune disease.
Michael got only the kind of attention that his family needed to survive, which was not necessarily what he needed. This is our cultural collective history. And herein lies the core of the problem. The kind of attention we get in our childhoods lives with us forever. When we get negative, toxic or traumatic attention, it damages our psyches, shows up in our bodies and causes us much emotional and physical pain forever. When we receive positive, loving attention, support, acknowledgment, respect, appropriate direction, we can thrive, prosper and live mentally healthy lives. Each of us needs different kinds of attention.
Iīve determined that some of our life work is to discover exactly what special kinds of attention our loved ones need, our employees need, our friends and our world citizens need. When we have learned this and we practice giving and receiving quality attention, we can create peace at home and on our planet.
The bottom line for me is that Michael Jackson was a truly gifted man, who made a huge contribution to the world of music and dance, who had great friends who loved him and who are grief stricken at his sudden death and who will miss him enormously. Michael was, after all, just one of us mortals who dealt with his early childhood trauma the best ways he knew how. I pray that his children will remember him for the loving, caring and available father that he is reputed to have been.
He called himself the King of Pop, even though much of his music sounded more like soul music. He designed wonderfully innovative dance routines which were celebrated around the world. He did everything he could to create a family for himself, to have children to father. He struggled to have different facial features and to have a lighter facial tone. Was he just not enough for himself?
One wonders if he ever felt the enormous love that was beamed his way.
Michael was "on" from the time he was five years old, when he was part of his musical family working the State Fair of Indiana. There have been consistent stories through the years about the abuse he suffered in his childhood; his father admits to hitting him with a belt. But his father didnīt think that was abusive. He said that it would have been abusive, if heīd hit him with a stick. Oh?
In life he received abundant attention from people around the planet. He was brilliant, a genius of a performer, an artistic visionary, a successful business man and a very young person in an adultīs body. He was shown to be often shy around other performers and in public; yet, on stage, he was a consummate performer. I find it hard sometimes to believe he was really fifty years old.
He danced and sang his way into our hearts. He composed some songs and wrote the lyrics for others which have received years of acclaim: We Are the World, BAD, Beat It, Black or White, Iīll Be There. He collaborated with Barry Gordy, Quincy Jones and others.
In death, he appears to be getting even more attention. Every day there are more stories, more people sharing their personal experiences about him, more opinions being aired. Heīs currently on most magazine covers, on mega TV stations and all over the radio. There is so much back and forth talk about his drug usage and his lack of drug usage, his continued quest for good nutrition, his continual prescription drug use. What is true? Perhaps he was a composite of all of it.
I heard Deepak Chopra, a dear friend and doctor, who called Michael his brother, talk about the emotional and physical abuse that Michael received in his childhood and how there is now sufficient research connecting auto immune diseases to early abuse. He said that Michael suffered from lupus, a deadly and debilitating auto immune disease.
Michael got only the kind of attention that his family needed to survive, which was not necessarily what he needed. This is our cultural collective history. And herein lies the core of the problem. The kind of attention we get in our childhoods lives with us forever. When we get negative, toxic or traumatic attention, it damages our psyches, shows up in our bodies and causes us much emotional and physical pain forever. When we receive positive, loving attention, support, acknowledgment, respect, appropriate direction, we can thrive, prosper and live mentally healthy lives. Each of us needs different kinds of attention.
Iīve determined that some of our life work is to discover exactly what special kinds of attention our loved ones need, our employees need, our friends and our world citizens need. When we have learned this and we practice giving and receiving quality attention, we can create peace at home and on our planet.
The bottom line for me is that Michael Jackson was a truly gifted man, who made a huge contribution to the world of music and dance, who had great friends who loved him and who are grief stricken at his sudden death and who will miss him enormously. Michael was, after all, just one of us mortals who dealt with his early childhood trauma the best ways he knew how. I pray that his children will remember him for the loving, caring and available father that he is reputed to have been.