After the storm, the shelter doors open. It has become normal to live today as though this were a different planet than we had traveled to 20-something years ago. If not for written words, how could we ever remember who we are?
Sometimes you need the 18-year-old from 40 years ago to help you get a foothold. I feel fortunate that I can still communicate with him. The contrast of what a 17 or 18-year-old needs to go through today compared to 40 years ago is like a planetary difference.
My concern is that, as a society, we have tried to minimize emotional pain by taking away the true meaning of relationships. But the depth of the emotional attachment in relationships is just as constant as the force of gravity itself. This means once our relationship is coming to an end, the inevitable pain and desolation are still there today just like it was 40 years ago. The problem is, as a society we have tried to pretend it wasn’t there and in doing so we are making it feel like it’s only happening to that one person. It has never happened to anyone else ever before in the history of the world. In doing so, we are not there for our younger ones.
As the Crawford family was getting ready to hike Mount Katahdin in Maine in 2018, having walked 2000 miles from Georgia, they did a lot of talking about how important it was that children are familiar with discomfort. I believe this to be 1000% true. When Liam was very little, probably about 27 months old, we were camping at Donna‘s brothers. The older kids were down by a little brook that flowed through the low part of the property we were at in the woods. I was keeping him in my sites while I talked with a couple who were visiting from Connecticut. Liam was very good at sprinting. He suddenly bolted down the hill through the brush towards the stream towards the other kid's voices. I was instantly out of my chair running at my absolute full speed towards the brush and the stream where he had disappeared. As I neared the bottom of the hill I tripped. Not wanting to be slowed down by stumbling, I vaulted myself through the air almost Superman-like, parallel to the ground that was sloping below me, and caught Liam just before he fell into the water. I walked back up with Liam in my arms, to where I had been sitting at the table. The woman I’ve been talking with shook her head and looked at me. “I’m gonna tell you what, I have never seen anybody in my life move as fast as you just moved.“ It was nothing talented. For lack of a better term, I would have to quote Woody in the Toy Story movie, Who described Buzz Lightyear’s flying as simply “falling with style.“
My point is, that my life has been a series of jumping in the dark without ever knowing if there was a place to land, yet having some blind faith that there would be. I wanted something different for my children, and in doing so it made me the classic helicopter parent. If you would ask me in my 30s if I would ever do such a thing I would’ve told you that there would be no way, yet there I was. I never realized how important it is for a child to feel discomfort. It was only after I stopped being overprotective did I noticed that my son was amazing at figuring things out. Like me, he had to experience them though.
One of my children is very good at gleaning solid lessons from other people's experiences. As you might guess, this only goes so far. The deeper valleys of coming of age still lie in wait, like snakes on the trail ahead. It is at those moments that I wish to regress to my overprotective parent status. Old habits die hard. I have to remind myself that here, the refinement arrives. I fear that modern culture has done a major disservice in trying to erase that refinement, and in doing so has left so many people in a 15-year-old-like mentality for the rest of their lives.
This came with a particular generation, but I am not blaming them solely of course. My generation, Gen X, is responsible for that generation. What did we do? What happened from the mid-80s to the year 2000? MTV stopped playing music. The Internet happened. It would be an excellent scapegoat to blame social media but during the formidable years of millennials, It didn’t really exist until later. It makes me wish I had met the Crawfords 20 years earlier, or at least the idea of what they symbolize. Their thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail had nothing to do with suggesting that other families should do the same. It was a reminder to look at the people in your family and understand what each one of their gifts is and allow them to show each other who they are. They showed that in doing so a level of discomfort is experienced based on decisions and it strengthens them and gives them the resolve to take on challenges, to express their gifts, to succeed, to not be afraid to fail, and to live.
As a parent, I now crave balance. I really do value what I have. We all know the awful truth is that hindsight is 2020, and inevitably I can never stop the wish but I had done things better. I know I’m a good parent, don’t get me wrong. I think I am just expressing the depth of love that all good parents have when they see their children grow up so fast. It takes more than a lifetime to learn.
