Alex and Brett Harris wrote a book called “Do Hard Things” which I probably would know nothing about but for an excerpt in TPE, the magazine of my church’s denomination. (Yep, I’m one of those crrrrazy Pentecostals. Are you scared? Are you making assumptions right now? You are, aren’t you? That’s okay. I love you anyway.)
I was impressed. The book is directed toward teenagers, which, strangely enough, is a group that no longer accepts me as one of their own. (I am still a little hurt by this.) The book’s premise seems to be (understand, I have only read an excerpt, not the whole book, so I’m sailing a little blind here) that the “Myth of Adolescence” has turned a group that should be vibrant, energetic, unstoppable into a lethargic and rebellious one.
What a waste. As the book says, “We waste some of the best years of our lives and never reach our full God-given potential. We never attempt things that would stretch, grow and strengthen us. We end up weak and unprepared for the amazing future that could have been.”
I’m 26. My husband is 25. We’ve both been working since we were about 14. Of course, it was part-time during the school year, and some of my earlier jobs were just baby-sitting. But at that tender, adolescent age, our parents expected us to begin to take responsibility, to pay for stuff we wanted, to contribute. We didn’t have to put grocery money into the family pot or anything, but that probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea.
We’re not rich, by any means. But we have worked for and gained an independence that many of my peers seem unable to find. And we’re not talking teenagers! It starts then, back at 13, or before, maybe at 10, or 6, when the whole world revolves around a child’s happiness. At what point do you let the child know that the point of the world isn’t to make him happy? It’s a sad awakening, and I have friends who are still fighting that knowledge as hard as they can.
Some people manage to avoid acknowledging that truth their entire lives, and they are the ones who Alex and Brett describe on their blog as “ Peter Pans who shave.” (This article they wrote describes more about “adultescence.”)
I see that in my generation, now in our mid-twenties. I see that in the one coming behind me, the teens with shiny laptops and enormous libraries of music on their iPods, but with no vision for the future, no library of skills or knowledge or character from which to draw.
We’re going to be playing catch-up for a while. We better start getting over our own lies and pointing the way.