11.18.2009

Bane

/
Teenagers.

Everyone has opinions about them. Aristotle. Your Aunt Bess.

I read somewhere, confirmed by a very smart friend of mine, that a personbrain doesn't finish growing until the LATE TWENTIES. Did you read that?? 27 or so if you're female and 29 or so if you're male. (That's why you can't be President until you're 35!)

So I guess when you're 7 and you don't get the world, it's cute. We call it Innocence. Your mom says No but you are filled with trust and accept. Eventually. But the trust leaks out over the years and a bitter root leeches in the heart. It shrivels and closes the heart which cannot see the greater good. As a teen, you cannot understand, will not understand. The Injustice. HOW could she say No to me? HOW could she DO that to ME?

Ha. Doesn't it sound JUST. LIKE. US? I mean Us grown-ups. We grown-ups?? Wee grown-ups. Don't we rail at God? When bad things happen to good people. When good things happen to bad people. Do we really know Good and Bad? Do we see the perspective of the Universe? Can we see an Eternal perspective?  Do we rail at God for saying the conceptual "no?"

Might God have made adolescents so we can see how we don't see? and that we have to trust our Father?


2 comments:

Haley said...

A very thought provoking post. It will make me look at teens in a totally differnt light now...as well as other things!

Lora said...

another interesting thing about brains?
A 14-17ish year old is operating at the same brain function as a toddler.

Everything that was built in childhood shuts down for awhile while the body goes through the last stages of puberty.

I feel like I've already laid that one on you though. I feel like knowing that your tenth grader is a preschooler on the inside helps you not kill them.

Also, I have a great essay in my brain about this. I'm totally obsessed at who we are at our most primal. Shed away the mores and the societal pressures and focus on who we were two-four thousand years ago kind of stuff. I love it!