It's not the first time I've seen it, and I am sure it will not be the last time either. Though I often find myself in a mental resting spot where I would be glad not to see it again. And today I'm in a contemplative state and trying to pinpoint why I have a mild dislike for this type of statement. Maybe because I understand some of it. Taken apart, I fit the person who is stating this in so many ways.
My curfew was the street lights
I lived out of the city limits for much of my childhood, so "streetlight curfew" wasn't really a part of things. Though I was free to take the dog and my .22 rifle and go on a hike in any direction I chose as long as I was back home by sunset.
my mom didn't call my cell, she yelled "time to come in"
No cell phones growing up and I do fight a dislike for that particular piece of technology - a combination of not wanting to be highly available and a dislike for its rude intrusion into many social settings.
I played outside with friends, not online
Well, I can shorten this to "I played outside." Shortcomings of my own and my life circumstances made friends scarce. And yet this is one that I am a split mind on. I loved the out doors, and I still find that I can grab peace there quicker than anywhere else. Yet even as a child I understood the draw of computers and technology. I spent countless hours typing programs into an ancient Atari PC just to do something simple like change the screen from blue to green. And yes mom, when we upgraded to the Commodore 64 - I was the one who took the keyboard apart to see how it worked. Had "online" existed when I was that age, I know that my own outdoor time would have dwindled drastically.
If I didn't eat what my mom made me, then I didn't eat
This was quite true of my formative years. It has also been true in my household up until recently. I understand disliking a household where children will "only eat" a narrow menu of PB&J, chicken nuggets and cheese sandwiches. I have cringed at young guests who, when I go out of the way to plan kid friendly meals decide that the fare is unpalatable because the macaroni and cheese was not the right shape.
Hand sanitizer didn't exist
No, it didn't. And my mom fought a constant battle of trying to keep us all clean, and to help us become aware of personal hygiene. Now I'm the mom and I'm the broken record. At the same time I didn't freak out when my toddler ate dirt, and I expected that my children would jump in mud puddles on the way home from the bus. I have more "play clothes" than dress clothes for the girls, and I expect that they will get stained, torn, cut, or painted on.
you COULD get your mouth washed out with soap
I could be one of the few hold-outs in my generation that went to a public school that practiced this. It was in the inter-mountain west, which ran years behind the rest of the US when I was a youth and we had an older (ancient to my 6 year old perception) principal who was a die hard on swearing. Yup, it did happen when I was a kid, although it did not happen a lot. We probably had one of the cleanest vocabularies of any public school at that time.
I rode a bike without a helmet
Quite true.
getting dirty was OK
Hmm, not so much OK, as expected. Whether it was from hard work or rough play - we got dirty. But with my mom around we were absolutely not allowed to STAY that way.
"Like" if you drank water from the garden hose and survived
We didn't just drink from the garden hose, we found many creative uses for it - launching 2 liter bottle rockets comes to mind.
These statements are nostalgic. It does make me smile to remember the rockets and the hikes up the mountain with the dog. They bring people together, people from a generation before hand sanitizer, the internet,and cell phones. Even with all of the quircky unique-ness of my own upbringing I can relate to others who lived at the time. So why does it bug me?
Because the statement is also critical. It unveils my own critical spirit, and I am not certain that the direction this type of statement is headed is where I ultimately want to go. I'm not sure that it is a bad thing that my children don't roam the streets without my knowledge of their where-abouts. Do I really want to paint the internet, cell phones, and hand sanitizer as "changes that aren't good".
There are so many flavors to life. Thankfully I have been blessed by three adventurous eaters, and I have never faced the dilemma that some parents have at meal time. In a day and age where frozen food has opened the door to having different items for meal time, the request of a child to have something different than what the adults are eating is much more easily met than it used to be. Yes, there are still questions of balanced meals, and even more importantly the line where requests end and at the point the child ends up in control of the parent, yet there is a degree of flexibility that there wasn't thirty years ago.
I've learned this as my youngest has been diagnosed with an intolerance to lactose. We have made changes and try to be mindful of this, but on frozen pizza night she gets to make Whitecastle hamburgers. We've diverged from the path of a one meal fits all. And there are so many other reasons to have diverse meals. Families that don't have the same schedules, families whose children are older and capable in the kitchen, why would I target this issue as something bad. I could understand it if I were a nutritionist or a professional meal planner - but I'm not.
It gets targeted because it makes me feel superior with my "sit-down, home-cooked meal,s 2 x's a week" menu. Oh yes, there is a grain of truth to this that lends credence to my feelings of superiority. It makes them stronger, and more dangerous because I can easily justify it, shaking my head about picky eaters and parents without the ability to say no.
Do I really want to paint my degree of "cleanliness" as the right one and put others who use more sanitizer on a plane labeled "germ-a-phobe". Why not allow for differing views - a broad spectrum of those who clean throughly, those who struggle with clutter, and those who accept it. Yes, there is that grain of truth - the far ends of the bell curve. Those who use sanitizer to the point that they have damaged their own immune systems, and those who hoard clutter to the point where it causes them injury. But can those ends of the spectrum really hold up such a view on hand-sanitizer? Not unless it is supported by my own desire for superiority and self-satisfaction.
The above statement connects with my feeling of superiority, but it also connects with my resistance to change. And change is happening ever so much faster than it used to. The period of time between the 8-track and the cassette tape could be a geologic era compared to the time one handheld device in our current society is replaced with a successor.
The digital revolution is here to stay, as were automobiles a generation ago. The automobile swept in and changed our lives. Cities grew and developed suburbs of extraordinary sizes, tourism started, grocery stores offered produce from different climates. It started slowly with the wealthy owning an automobile as a novelty. Now we live in a society where two vehicles per household is normative. Take one of those away for a week at the local mechanics and we go into a tailspin.
Our children will have a world that is defined by all that is digital. Take it away and yes the tailspin ensues. It is scary at times. I have a deep and abiding fear of what this is going to do to my children. I wonder if anyone felt that way about societies growing dependence on automobiles. And I fight to accept the changes that come so fast and furiously. Because my children will live in this new world, this uncharted digital world that lives and changes at a breathtaking pace.
As a product of attempts to use isolation from society as a way of dealing with change, I know that is not the answer. And something deep inside me tells me that I need to tread a line of discernment with technology and change, not a line of criticism.
Discernment tells us that too much of a good thing (hand sanitizer?) can be a bad thing. Discernment tells us that the internet is a tool that has potential for great good and great evil. Discernment helps me find balance in this new land that is the lifestyle that my children will lead. Criticism, on the other hand, supports my sense that what I experienced was right. It draws lines and divides. Criticism fractures relationships over silly things like whether a child spends their free time on a playground, reading a book, or on survival mode in Minecraft. Criticism blurs the line of what is really wrong, by placing an unimaginable number of things in that arena to muddy reality and make the things that we truly should be on guard against difficult to find in the mess.
Discernment will allow me my nostalgia without finding fault in a changing world just because it has changed. I need more discernment, more wisdom, more of God's view on this changing scary life where I feel the need to put down others in minor areas to make myself more comfortable in my own choices. A world of critiques where I feel the need to justify choices which are just one of a range of flavors. I hope that I can learn that God created us different, and that different alone is not bad. I hope that I can grow more tolerant of others and yet still hold to the lines set up as Biblical boundaries. Not an easy balance to keep in this world.
There are so many flavors to life. Thankfully I have been blessed by three adventurous eaters, and I have never faced the dilemma that some parents have at meal time. In a day and age where frozen food has opened the door to having different items for meal time, the request of a child to have something different than what the adults are eating is much more easily met than it used to be. Yes, there are still questions of balanced meals, and even more importantly the line where requests end and at the point the child ends up in control of the parent, yet there is a degree of flexibility that there wasn't thirty years ago.
I've learned this as my youngest has been diagnosed with an intolerance to lactose. We have made changes and try to be mindful of this, but on frozen pizza night she gets to make Whitecastle hamburgers. We've diverged from the path of a one meal fits all. And there are so many other reasons to have diverse meals. Families that don't have the same schedules, families whose children are older and capable in the kitchen, why would I target this issue as something bad. I could understand it if I were a nutritionist or a professional meal planner - but I'm not.
It gets targeted because it makes me feel superior with my "sit-down, home-cooked meal,s 2 x's a week" menu. Oh yes, there is a grain of truth to this that lends credence to my feelings of superiority. It makes them stronger, and more dangerous because I can easily justify it, shaking my head about picky eaters and parents without the ability to say no.
Do I really want to paint my degree of "cleanliness" as the right one and put others who use more sanitizer on a plane labeled "germ-a-phobe". Why not allow for differing views - a broad spectrum of those who clean throughly, those who struggle with clutter, and those who accept it. Yes, there is that grain of truth - the far ends of the bell curve. Those who use sanitizer to the point that they have damaged their own immune systems, and those who hoard clutter to the point where it causes them injury. But can those ends of the spectrum really hold up such a view on hand-sanitizer? Not unless it is supported by my own desire for superiority and self-satisfaction.
The above statement connects with my feeling of superiority, but it also connects with my resistance to change. And change is happening ever so much faster than it used to. The period of time between the 8-track and the cassette tape could be a geologic era compared to the time one handheld device in our current society is replaced with a successor.
The digital revolution is here to stay, as were automobiles a generation ago. The automobile swept in and changed our lives. Cities grew and developed suburbs of extraordinary sizes, tourism started, grocery stores offered produce from different climates. It started slowly with the wealthy owning an automobile as a novelty. Now we live in a society where two vehicles per household is normative. Take one of those away for a week at the local mechanics and we go into a tailspin.
Our children will have a world that is defined by all that is digital. Take it away and yes the tailspin ensues. It is scary at times. I have a deep and abiding fear of what this is going to do to my children. I wonder if anyone felt that way about societies growing dependence on automobiles. And I fight to accept the changes that come so fast and furiously. Because my children will live in this new world, this uncharted digital world that lives and changes at a breathtaking pace.
As a product of attempts to use isolation from society as a way of dealing with change, I know that is not the answer. And something deep inside me tells me that I need to tread a line of discernment with technology and change, not a line of criticism.
Discernment tells us that too much of a good thing (hand sanitizer?) can be a bad thing. Discernment tells us that the internet is a tool that has potential for great good and great evil. Discernment helps me find balance in this new land that is the lifestyle that my children will lead. Criticism, on the other hand, supports my sense that what I experienced was right. It draws lines and divides. Criticism fractures relationships over silly things like whether a child spends their free time on a playground, reading a book, or on survival mode in Minecraft. Criticism blurs the line of what is really wrong, by placing an unimaginable number of things in that arena to muddy reality and make the things that we truly should be on guard against difficult to find in the mess.
Discernment will allow me my nostalgia without finding fault in a changing world just because it has changed. I need more discernment, more wisdom, more of God's view on this changing scary life where I feel the need to put down others in minor areas to make myself more comfortable in my own choices. A world of critiques where I feel the need to justify choices which are just one of a range of flavors. I hope that I can learn that God created us different, and that different alone is not bad. I hope that I can grow more tolerant of others and yet still hold to the lines set up as Biblical boundaries. Not an easy balance to keep in this world.
No comments:
Post a Comment