A Period Of Transition
Baal HaSulam: “The Peace”: It (Providence) tends to its every need like a trained nanny who will not forget it even for a moment, until it has acquired the strength to emerge into our world. Then, too, Providence does not abandon it. Like a loving mother, it brings it to such loving, loyal people it can trust, called “Mother” and “Father.But those who examine that reality from the perspective of provision and persistence of existence can clearly see great disorder and confusion, as though there were no leader and no guidance. Everyone does that which is right in his own eyes, building himself on the ruin of others.”
Of course, we don’t see that in the inanimate level of nature and we hardly see it in the vegetative level. In the living part of nature we can see the parents’ concern for their young more clearly. Birds, fish and other animals protect their young instinctively and the more developed a species is, the more complex and thorough the care-taking of the young is. When the young grow, they let them go so that they will take care of themselves.
In people this is expressed most strongly. It isn’t enough for parents to take care of their young for several weeks or months. In order to be independent a child needs 20 years of preparation, with a special environment and education that includes kindergarten, school, university, learning a profession, and other artificial means that are not provided by nature. Only after all that is he ready to enter human society, which will require him to live according to accepted norms.
This is a great paradox. Until the age of 20, a person gets everything he needs not only from his parents, but also from the environment. The whole world participates in his growing up. Then things change and the world begins to demand that a person begin to act and take care of society. This gap is huge. Animals don’t feel a change in attitude. They simply go on with their lives, but in humans the attitude changes. Each of us goes through this breaking point, when he becomes a grown-up and discovers that the world has demands and that it even threatens him.
We don’t want this. We would prefer to remain kids, and today many succeed in doing that with their parents’ support. Still there is the question: Why has nature prepared all these phases of development for us? What has it achieved by doing so? What does it want from us? For what does it prepare us?
It may be that when we reach the age of 20 we simply don’t understand that from now on we have to live differently in the human environment. Perhaps, if we do everything correctly, our environment would seem like a “caring mother.” Perhaps the whole problem is in the mutual relations among us? If this is the case, the sharp contrast of the transition period, the hostility and the sudden demands, will only be an invitation to correct our relations with those around us.
[59794]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/4/11, “The Peace”
Related Material:
Saying Goodbye To Childhood
Balance That Causes Development
Learning To Be An Adult
