Ever Steeper, The Mountain Rises Before Me - Slowly I Climb

I get to vent today without guilt. You see, Sunday is Venting Day on The Great Sea. The other days are not, so when I do I feel guilty. But not today! Whoopee!

So what to vent about?

How about the biggest differences between children and adults? And I'm not talking about size.

Do you realize that children have a tendency to believe everything a person of authority tells them? Adults tend to be the opposite. We tend to disbelieve everything we're told until we have proof otherwise - unless it happens to agree with our preconceived notions.

Do you realize that a lot of adults are quite jealous of children? This jealousy only intensifies as the children become teenagers and, eventually, young adults.

Why do I say this? Well, apart from the fact that so many people I have spoken to never seem to have anything good to say about teenagers and young adults, I also listen to what they are trying to teach children, teenagers, and young adults.

We are born believing the world is ours and that all it contains is at our disposal. This gives us confidence to do a myriad of things - many which are just plain dangerous to infants and toddlers and such. To protect us, parents, and other adults, begin teaching us what we can't do. This is well and good. Except the teaching often doesn't stop at protection. It continues to life skills.

You will never learn to play that. You can't do that. That's for other people. You're not talented enough. That's no good.

We think we are protecting our children when we tell them they're athletic skills s*ck, that they're drawings are not worthy to be called art, that they singing is more annoying than a cricket in the house. We look and see no chance for a career and try to protect the children from the pain of failure by convincing them not to try in the first place. And do you know what? Most children believe these admonitions.

They grow up thinking they can't. And it snowballs. They've been told there are so many things they can't do that they just keep adding to the list on their own. And when they finally reach adulthood guess what? They can't do it!

What's just as sad is that when you tell an adult they can do it, they look at you like you're out of your frikkin' mind. They know in their heads that what you are saying is technically true - in general. But they can't make themselves believe it for themself. "Not in my case. I'm different. I can't."

It takes years - decades - for people to finally get to the place where desire says, "To h*ll with it", and they give it a serious go anyway. Too many people have to wait until they are facing retirement, or looking back on it, before they realize that they can.

Books, movies, television, news features. These all make it seem like the discovery is a one-time thing of wonder. No. It's not. It's a series of small and large successes and failures as adults who have finally reached the place where they need to start anew struggle to find out what it is they have missed for most of their lives. There are days of great joy and wonder and hope. These are followed by days of great sorrow, loneliness, and despair. The cycle continues until such time that the adult comes to find the place where they always wanted to be.

We can make this journey to find our places much easier for each other if we would only stop telling young people that they can't. Don't fill in the passes between the mountains because you're afraid of what lies beyond. Doing so only means a rough and dangerous climb in order to get where we need to go. And getting down the other side we risk hurtful falls, which would be far less painful had we been able to walk on more level ground.

For a young person one of the most exciting things there is to believe is, "I can".

For someone who has never believed that it is quite terrifying, really. I know. That's my experience. I am not on the mountaintop. But I'm climbing with many slips and slides.

What, oh what, is on the other side of this mountain I climb?