Translating a World on the Edge

Are  we away from home? Not necessarily the place–home. But maybe, where our  heart   ‘used to be’?  Where we may have had different values than the ones we have now?

To find ourselves in such a place, a place that’s not home,  can be disrupting and often disturbing to us–especially if we want to go back. And most especially, if home held the values for us of honesty, justice, determination,  consideration, and most important, love. Values we may not see in the place we are today.

But what if home wasn’t like that? What if the values our home held were the opposite of those above. What if there was  lying in our home, and injustice,  goal-less commands, meanness, and no conception, or perception, of  love?

Wouldn’t we flee from those attitudes?

Many young people experience a life like that, and they flee from it.  The problem is that some also take those undesired values with them when they leave. And that affects others–in another family they may create, in their workplace, in their social connections.

The heart of our homes–the values we teach cannot be given less importance than the schools we were sent to, the ‘things’ we were given,  or the particular sort of house we lived in–big or small.

An old Jesuit saying:: ‘Give me the child and I will give you the man.’ Which is to say how very important the training of a child is.

“Up to the age of seven, we are like sponges, absorbing everything around us and accepting much of it as true, especially when it comes from our parents. The confusion and blind belief of this period can also lead to the early formation of trauma and other deep problems. The critical thing here is to learn a sense of right and wrong, good and bad.” (Changingminds.org) And home is where this is taught.

We are our children’s first and most important teachers. Our home is their schoolroom.  And though we often forget —that makes us, and the home environment we create– very important  to the world around us.