Every Thursday morning, the teachers of the Valley gather for a weekly meeting that is low in procedural fluff and high in substance – that is to say, rather than talking about nothing to accomplish nothing, we may read an essay or short story (Edward Abbey’s polemic from Desert Solitaire, Fr. James Schall on grades, Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture, to name a few) or chew on some poetry alongside bagels and coffee. One such morning last school year, we read and discussed Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “My Lost Youth,” in which Longfellow reminisces upon the town of his childhood, each stanza concluding with a verse from a Lapland song: “a boy’s will is the wind’s will, / And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” While noting the importance of man being rooted in place, the discussion turned to the “burden of that old song,” and the “long, long thoughts” which seem to evade the grasp of those who “grow old” rather than “grow up.”
In an earlier time, I spent several months taking the train up the coast from Charlottesville to New York City, bedecked in a blue suit and brown brogues, sitting for interviews with various Manhattan and London-based companies. Several of these were the culmination of rather long processes, including applications and phone interviews, and one was an all-day affair with multiple in-person interactions, pitting final-stage applicants against each other in a somewhat William Golding-esque scenario as the interviewers waited to see which of us would crawl to the head of the board table. Towards evening, the twenty-odd applicants were gathered in a room and, one by one, names were called and those souls filed out of the room, expectation and excitement punctuating their exultant exiting steps. Soon enough, the door closed, and only five of us remained. The punctiliously dressed Englishman who had run us through the various drills of the day walked into the room, cleared his throat, and channeling his inner Willy Wonka, informed us that we had won, would be hearing more soon, and to get a drink. A collective sigh left the room. The proverbial – and pecuniary – world was our oyster.
A month passed, and I joined my family for ten days in the shadows of the Teton Range, and I fell under the spell of our raft guide, Ryan, who told bawdy jokes to the chagrin of my Victorian mother as he deftly guided our raft through the Snake River Canyon. He had gauged ears, a massive goat skull tattooed across his chest, and a giant accordion-rolled swatch of dreadlocked hair tied over his head with a produce-aisle rubber band that sat above the shaved sides of his head. A constant chaw of tobacco sat in his lower lip, and he had a lilting guffaw that followed much of what he said. He was a raft guide, a hunter, and an all-things-fun seeker who had a goal of hula-hooping on top of every Teton peak, replete with an Instagram account dedicated to the project. He called the pack-goats he hunted with his “lost boys,” he referred to the valley in which he lived as Neverland, and he told stories of taking ’shrooms in a camp chair set in the side creeks of the Grand Canyon while pink elephants danced upon the canyon walls.
I was enthralled by this distant land, and disenchanted by the box-like existence offered by a business development job in the City. So I ditched the idea of an all-business, cash-guaranteed, concrete, workaday rat race for the unknown. I loaded all of my belongings into my car and drove to western Wyoming where a room had recently opened up at the little two-story hut in the woods where my architect-brother lived with a mid-forties, unemployed, trust-funded ski bum named Scott, who had lost his hearing and drank copious amounts of light beer and La Croix and could only communicate by writing on a tablet and screaming at us, arms waving, like a bird with clipped wings seeking to fly. By the end of the following spring, Scott and I never really hit it off, Ryan became a colleague and a drinking buddy, and I realized that my pendulum had swung from one pole to the other.
On the streets of Manhattan, I had walked with men who had shed their child-like joie de vivre without losing their human concupiscence, thus retaining their childishness. In the vales of Wyoming, I ripped sleds through the snow with guys who had not lost their child-like habit of “long, long thoughts” and yet still wallowed in their concupiscence. The former were caricatures of self-important seriousness, and the latter were caricatures of flippant pleasure-hoppers; both sets exhibited extreme forms of toddler behavior, and each thought they were living life right – the first in the miserable manner of many who go through life complaining about “adulting,” wishing they could give it up, and the second in the naive pattern of existence that fails to recognize that, despite their individuality, they are “a part of the main.”
In the end, both are narcissistic in the manner of toddlers and both childish in their behavior, because what humans often fail to realize as they age – and we fail to teach – is that “growing up” does not mean losing one’s ability to enjoy the most seemingly mundane aspects of life, dreaming of seemingly-impossible realities, and rebounding from difficulties with a short memory. Rather, it means growing in virtue and maturity without losing what makes a toddler such an unceasing joy to have in the house. In truth, the descriptor “toddler” generally calls to mind all of their uncultivated habits and fails to recollect that toddlers are delightful creatures who brighten up every room they enter, with imaginations that allow for pillows to be rivers, climbing structures to be mountains, and shadows to be dragons. They are a joy despite their unfettered concupiscence, thanks to the “child-like” part of the equation – a livelihood filled with big dreams, unexplored frontiers, and the uncompromising desire that anything is possible, all of which is buttressed by an unyielding trust in their parents, the cornerstone of their little worlds.
As we age and inevitably begin to find that our parents – and teachers, leaders, et cetera – are imperfect, our little perfect worlds begin to teeter, and we are taught that to succeed we must batten down the hatches, carve out little safe zones, and stop dreaming of the impossible because it is just that: impossible. And the “long, long thoughts” of youth fritter away as we box in the present and forsake the eternal only to wake up one day and say, “If only. . .”
We sigh deeply and maybe take a moment to muddle about and wallow in self-pity before thinking something like “another day, another dollar” or sarcastically consider that we are “living the dream” and despondently march on, muttering about this or that, waiting for the future and rehashing the past. Meanwhile, our need for “experiences” to make us feel young again lead us to take super-charged vacations devoid of leisure as we rush from one event or scene to another because “we only have so much time!” and “Old Faithful is erupting in forty-five minutes according to the hotline, so we only have two minutes to take pictures here, and there better not be any bison jams because it will throw the whole day out of whack,” and other such nonsense that contradicts the point of going afar and runs counter to the very essence of being a child, who need only put any import on the very tangible here and now.
Parents – and by extension, educators – are stand-ins for God in a child’s young years and must lead them into a position where we gradually return the mantle of parenthood to the Divine without losing our position of “shepherd” as the children themselves assume their mantles of shepherd-dom. This delicate trade-off, from superior to equal, is a difficult but necessary step in the maturation process of a boy, as there must be a moment when it is realized that they have assumed a new “standing” and are now engaged in similar work, both corporeal and spiritual. Yet while they are now co-equals, their grasp of the virtue of wisdom, deriving from experience and contemplation, is definitionally behind. These young-ish souls must be given opportunities to explore and lead, and the older must have the awareness to recede from the front, while not forsaking the responsibility to advise from the rear.
We had guests over for dinner from out of state, a couple in law school. I asked, as I often do, if they enjoyed their studies, if they found satisfaction in their work, what they are pursuing, and what they hope to accomplish. In response, both replied to the first few questions in the negative, neither sure of why exactly they were in school other than that it might lead to full coffers somewhere down the line. Pondering their answers over a finger of Laphroaig on the porch later that evening, I thought of a line from one of those inspirational videos that went viral in my college years in which the philosopher Alan Watts queries, “What would you like to do if money were no object?”
This is not to say that a boy should be directed away from professions that pay well, but rather to say that a boy should be pointed toward a profession that best matches his abilities and affinities, regardless of the money. A profession should provide financially but more so, it should provide fulfillment and a sense that it could be done for the greater good because there is a higher good than self. Seeking fortune over fulfillment leads boys to grow physically tall – and wide, as it may be – shedding the positive attributes of childhood without losing the tyrannical aspects; growing in stature yet failing to grow in the Cardinal virtues – prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude – that should inform, rather than replace, our inherently child-like hearts. Shedding the “what will theoretically allow me to have prestige and money” (which is what we often consider when looking at our children), and the question becomes, “What are the gifts, the superpowers, that God has given you, and how will you use them?” Using and unleashing the given gifts will lead to lasting and contented happiness and greater prestige than “following the money.” Dig through the callus of jadedness, and you will find the question and answer of a child – “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And upon asking the question, we cannot let him answer it alone.
On my daily commute, Pete Seeger’s “Little Boxes” is sometimes a distant twang in my mind as I look out the window at the expensive little boxes on the road and the larger little boxes to which the denizens of the Capital Beltway are frustratedly driving home. This is what we end up with if we lose the nature of a child: “little boxes on a hillside… little boxes all the same… and the people in the houses all [go] to the university… and they all come out the same.”
Our dreams, like our lives, get boxed in, too, put on distant shelves of our memory as we strap on the uniform of “Being an Adult Now” and march to the steady beat of modernity’s tumultuous drum. And in losing that child-likeness, we then try to beat it out of our children, putting them in boxes – say, “You like baseball, so you will play baseball year-round on a travel team for an exorbitant price” – at even younger ages to instill a way of life that is counter to our very humanity, an adulthood lacking in virtue but strong in a misplaced sense of order, where we punish rather than discipline, and encourage the chase for paper crowns rather than the stewardship and command to “fill the earth and subdue it” which is written upon our very souls.
The antidote to this pandemic of growing stale with age is engaging in “play,” which can be broken into two main categories: propagating a moral imagination and a sense of adventure. Both of these can be achieved through a healthy diet of reading and exploration, and both, in their very natures, are reliant on building strong habits which must be constantly cultivated. Just as comfort breeds complacency in the workplace, so does a lack of reading and exploration lead to atrophy of the child-like mind. Similarly, inane assignments and the shackles of too much “desk-time” actually serve to weaken these muscles in our young boys, rather than what they purport to do. The natural progression of learning is not forcing information into a brain – this falls prey to the fallacy that boys are pieces of clay that we sculpt – but rather leading boys to harness their innate desire to constantly push the boundaries of the unknown, further and further out, shrinking the unknown as their thirst for knowing the Real expands. By placing boys in nutrient-rich soil and constantly working that land in such a way to conserve their natural desires, rather than overworking it such that the fields become fallow, we offer them the ability to flourish through a fascination with mystery.
In reading, this means gradually raising the bar in substance, transitioning from easier reading to more difficult reading over time so that their interest grows, and helping each respective boy find the books that will fuel his interest. In adventure, we likewise aim to calibrate the difficulty of an expedition to grow with them so that the desire remains to do more. Too much and a boy will be overburdened, too little and his adventure muscles will atrophy. Similarly, too much time in a classroom (read: most elementary-age and middle school students) dulls a boy’s senses so much that it all but squelches yearning. And for both, as any outdoorsman can attest, these are fires that must be stoked through constant opportunity, or what is designed to set the world aflame with the hope of what could be will smolder and eventually die out in a mess of wrinkles and yearning for what was.
Further, the ease with which we access information and entertainment today, whether through subscriptions or the super-computer carried in our pockets, dulls the senses and provides a comfortable place for our mind to avoid the effort needed to expand. By giving a child a choice between playing a game or watching a TV show, they will likely choose the latter because they can sit back and wallow. But if we simply take away the choice, invite them to some highly-imaginative game or to sink into the pages of a book, the elasticity of their natures will allow them to quickly jump in. I would venture to say that as adults, we can do the same if we choose not to curate but to create, and cease to consider why something will not work, but rather, how it might. Thus opening the door to view problems not as roadblocks but as opportunities – this is how children think, and how modern schooling teaches us not to think – will keep us young-hearted.
The classic, closing number from Mary Poppins brings this view of life to the fore shortly after Mr. Banks, embracing his role of father, is fired from his job due to the actions of his children. Finding his inner child, he responds with appropriate aplomb, telling a joke and marching off to mend a kite and play with his children. (Note that the poor constable charged with finding him excitedly calls his superior to share some of this exponential joy, only to be squashed: “I said, go fly a kite! No, not you personally, sir…”) And, lest you be thinking that all there is to life is play and no responsibility, Mr. Banks’ reward for reigniting his child-like spirit – and perhaps, more importantly, the spirit of grumpy Mr. Dawes, Sr., who quite literally dies laughing – is earning a promotion as Mr. Dawes, Jr., flies a kite nearby. Watching this tableau unfold, Mary Poppins sees that her job is complete, and she sails away to save another family.
It is necessary then, to note the difference between the character of Mary Poppins and that of Peter Pan. Both seemingly pursue a life of joy, and yet one is a positive, “child-like” joy, and the second “child-ish.” That is, Mary Poppins has grown up (read: matured) without growing old: she understands the importance of family, work, cleanliness, and order, without taking these things overly seriously. In short, she is virtuous, yet has a youthful imagination and a sense of play. Meanwhile, Peter Pan is a tragic character, for he seeks a good but falls prey to a twisted one, like the ski bums I drank with at sticky-floored Jackson Hole dive bars. All play and no work makes just as dull a boy as all work and no play. In Neverland, one never “grows up,” and thus never matures. Peter Pan escapes the world because it does things wrong, rather than doing the right thing in the world – in a sense, the idea of Neverland is a form of despair, a loss of hope in the divinely-created world, a pursuit of bottomless pleasures that leave the soul empty and wanting, while the view of Mary Poppins is to have a child-like joy amid our daily lives.
This escape from the world is inadequate, but the polar alternative is equally tragic. Take C. S. Lewis’s Susan from The Chronicles of Narnia, a stand-in for my erstwhile compatriots in the big city. Unlike her siblings, who age bodily but not spiritually, Susan “grows old” and loses the ability to return to Narnia – a lesson perhaps in our efforts to attain eternal salvation in Heaven: “Let the children come to me. . . for the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14). We are urged to run to God as a child, and yet we culturally squeeze childhood out of children through a misunderstanding of what it means to grow up. This is the travesty of modern education: what is supposed to be the zenith of childhood, ages twelve to fifteen, the time before we cross the mountain pass of maturity from boy to young man, and we tell them they cannot play, or dream, or explore, but force them to sit and give them screens, locking them in when we should be leading them out – or shall we say, educating them.
In this vein, the greatest gift that we can give our children is not a house, extravagant vacations, the newest pair of Air Jordans, or perfectly smoked brisket, but Time: the very thing most of us adults wish we had been given more of by our parents, yet turn around and rarely give to our children when we “grow old.” By telling our children “I’m busy” or the unbounded “maybe later”, we are teaching the future of our culture that adults are an amorphous outside noise (à la Charles Schulz’s Peanuts) that only drops down upon them as the sword of Damocles when things go awry; and when we bend to or break their wind-like wills – predictable in their patterns, yet unpredictable in their ferocity – rather than channeling them, we lose the long game in favor of immediate placidity. In so doing, we put fetters on their dreams and squash the inherent hope which rests within each of us, a hope rooted in the eternal that relies on a child-like outlook to see the light in a darkened room.
It is through play that we feed our imaginations and discover how to apply responsibilities wisely. When we play with our children – or engage in play amongst ourselves – whether it is crawling around playing lions, a game of catch, or simply picking up a Magnolia seed-cone on the ground and launching it as far as we can, we not only tap into the very real fountain of youth that rushes through contact with young persons, but we also vividly demonstrate to our children and students that they are unique and necessary members of a family who are loved and whose imaginations are appreciated as they meld with our own. But enough: close your browser now, and go outside and play— and let those dreams soar, “up to the highest height… up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear.” And surely you’ll find that through God, faith, and hope-filled adults, reality will exceed those dreams.