When I was at Secondary School one of the required readings was the 1954 classic, “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. I never read it. However I did see the movie some years later. No reading was required! A decade later I did finally read it.
The story is about a group of children stranded on a deserted island after being shot down in World War II; no adults survived. The writer was exploring the idea that if children were left to themselves, would they create a civil society? Well, the answer was patently, no. In fact their infant community dissolved into a kind of violent tribalism that unfolded to become a stark image of adult reality.
The final scene of the book is of a hunted child being rescued from death by a naval officer, but the visual backdrop is a of a large battleship moored in the harbour. The children may have segued into violent chaos, but adults were little different. A neatly pressed white uniform and a technologically advance ship, means adults are large children with the same evil tendencies – only more respectable.
While raising our children I have often asked them to “grow up”. I’ve used this phrase with our 14 year old on several occasions. Yet what am I really asking? Am I asking for them to become something they are not? Or am I asking them to be subtler? It’s an interesting question. What does it mean to grow up?
I wonder if growing up isn’t just a natural process that is hindered by two destructive tendencies; one is arrogance, the other, ignorance. Both wreck the natural process of becoming the kinds of people God intended us to be.
I have never though myself as an arrogant person. However I have come to realise that the tendencies are there. Every time I project a problem I have onto someone else; every time I blame someone for a problem that affects me, or every time I rationalise an issue away, I am exercising a kind of arrogance. I am saying, “I have no role in removing the blocks to my own growth”.
In the same way ignorance leads us to take responsibility for all our problems but leaves us feeling constantly guilty with little or no self worth. We suffer from self-condemnation and shame, developing perfectionist tendencies.
Arrogance means we must change everyone else, while ignorance says we cannot change ourselves because we are of no worth.
In each of our lives these two voices exist. If they were to be removed we would grow instantaneously and naturally - it’s called gaining wisdom, the very thing I want my kids to learn.
There is a biblical proverb that, abbreviated, says: “Blessed is the person who finds wisdom, the one who gains understanding…Life is in wisdoms hands…and all her ways are peace…Wisdom is a tree of life to those who find it.” (Proverbs 3:13-18)
Is such wisdom yours? If you seek it, you will find it.
© Digby Wilkinson 2007