Friday, 9/26/14
In saying, “There is a
time for everything,” the Bible is telling you to act your age. In creating
our natures, God programmed them to develop by stages.
First of all, children must be allowed to play, to learn
their world, and to work out their own right way of managing their world.
King Edward VI of England was a sad exception to this, from
the time he was weaned, he was dressed like an adult. He was called on to
settle matters of state. He died at fifteen after childishly putting his half
sister Mary aside in favor of his cousin Jane. A parliament that resented this immature
whim, made Lady Jane pay for it with her head.
We are indebted
to the Swedish mountain climber Erik Erikson for his fine insights into normal
teenage development. His thesis pointed out that with twelve-year-olds their hormones
drive them away from their parents. Nature then programs them through a six
year “moratorium.” It has them
patching together what will be their adult personality. They face heart aches
if that inchoate teen-age-personality has saddled them with the wrong mates and
with detestable tattoos.
With the movies always asking us to identify with men and
women under thirty-five, it can happen that as we go past forty, we strain to
keep looking like those role models.
I found a much different emphasis when I settled into Korean
village life sixty years ago. I found that young married ladies worked day and
night to keep their mother-in-laws from punishing them. Each bride yearned for
the day when her oldest son would marry, giving her a daughter-in-law to push
around. Then, those forty-year-old ladies would take to wearing long dresses on
a round of singing and dancing at choice picnic spots.
There is no contentment like what comes when we can act our
age.
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