Only If You're Bleeding

Call me an insensitive mother of small children, but I hate band-aids.  Their physical annoyance of getting wet, coming unstuck, and leaving dirty black glue marks, bleeds, if you will, into their utilitarian menace as a placater for all things boo-boo to children.  I feel like when I need a band-aid, it really can't hold up to the daily grind, and ninety-nine percent of the time that a kid gets to apply one, it's just to make her stop whining.
Metaphorical band-aids can quite literally squeeze my soul until a gaping, ironic wound erupts, oozing my sanity and clouding my judgement with worry over the next spirit-crushing quick fix that might adhere itself to my life.
On a daily basis for me, the most harmful band-aids come in the form of non-solutions to social justice issues in public education.  I teach English as a Second Language full time in an elementary school and I see the ill-effects of data folders, pre- and post-tests, state assessments, and New! Research-Based! language arts programs on our children.  School districts spend millions of dollars on these band-aids while neglecting the goal of a solid education:  A happy, whole child.
What does this have to do with alternative healing, you might ask.  The educational band-aid metaphor is akin to the conditioning we've undergone as a society to buy this, pop this, drive this, or wear this to make us feel - whole?  Not really.  Temporarily satiated?  Maybe.  The cyclical emptiness and emotional longing that ensue from conditioned consumerism leave us with a deep need to heal.  On our healing paths we sometimes try band-aids in an earnest effort for wholeness.  Years ago, my general practitioner, who was conditioned to prescribe antidepressants, wrote me a script for Zoloft to help my symptoms of depression.  I was conditioned to believe that a pill would heal me.  If that were the case I would not be writing this post. But that band-aid, like many, was a learning experience.  We cannot change our past actions, but we can learn to change our attitudes and shift our focus away from consuming to feel better and toward autonomous healing.  We are only human, and sometimes band-aids are necessary to get us through the day or to deal with an unexpected problem.  Those patches (like the beer I had last night - hey, it helped calm my brain to start this post), as long as we recognize their role, are a way to keep us from straying from our healing paths
(sometimes, they plain keep us from going crazy).
Perhaps one day as well, school districts will recognize the difference between a quick fix and plotting a lifelong course, and they'll shift away from programming our children and toward allowing the learners to lead in their educational dance.
For now, readers, may we know when we are truly bleeding, and when to just give our four year old a box of cartoon bandages because he's wailing in a restaurant from bumping his head on our elbow (then maybe we can finish our wine).