ripening
I've just been running across a number of references to character flaws and virtues that describe my trajectory pretty well. It's funny, reading someone's blog and suddenly turning into Charleton Heston's Moses receiving the law on the mountain — all the principles of life are spoken with plenty of reverb and etched on fake rock, and then one zooms right at you. Pow!
The fact is that, though I'm still not an incredibly admirable person in a lot of ways, I'm way better off than I used to be. I look back at my 18- and 20-year-old self, and cringe. I even look back at my 6- and 8-year-old self and cringe. I never would have thought of myself as a bully back then, but, as Tolkien and Wagner remind us, all power is the Ring of power, corrupting whether you like it or not. I didn't physically tower over my peers, so I didn't bully them. I didn't bully them physically, that is. What I now realize is that I did often tower over them in other ways, and I often used that power for petty ends. There's really nothing worse you can do for a kid than to make him really smart and witty. Fortunately, though, that kid has the chance to grow up.
At a very young age, I embraced a spiritual narrative that said that I, though fatally flawed, was nonetheless loved and redeemed; and furthermore Loved and Redeemed. Why did it take so long to sink in that I was also charged with the joyous lowercase task of loving and redeeming? Why did I skip over so many stark admonitions about how we are to treat each other? Not quite right: why did I read those admonitions in such a way that they didn't apply where I needed them most?
Maybe this is what Solomon means when he says that a child trained in righteousness won't depart from it when he is old. Maybe for some folks it simply takes that long. How grateful I am to have lived this long! May I live a bit longer, please?
The fact is that, though I'm still not an incredibly admirable person in a lot of ways, I'm way better off than I used to be. I look back at my 18- and 20-year-old self, and cringe. I even look back at my 6- and 8-year-old self and cringe. I never would have thought of myself as a bully back then, but, as Tolkien and Wagner remind us, all power is the Ring of power, corrupting whether you like it or not. I didn't physically tower over my peers, so I didn't bully them. I didn't bully them physically, that is. What I now realize is that I did often tower over them in other ways, and I often used that power for petty ends. There's really nothing worse you can do for a kid than to make him really smart and witty. Fortunately, though, that kid has the chance to grow up.
At a very young age, I embraced a spiritual narrative that said that I, though fatally flawed, was nonetheless loved and redeemed; and furthermore Loved and Redeemed. Why did it take so long to sink in that I was also charged with the joyous lowercase task of loving and redeeming? Why did I skip over so many stark admonitions about how we are to treat each other? Not quite right: why did I read those admonitions in such a way that they didn't apply where I needed them most?
Maybe this is what Solomon means when he says that a child trained in righteousness won't depart from it when he is old. Maybe for some folks it simply takes that long. How grateful I am to have lived this long! May I live a bit longer, please?
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