Leaving Family

I often wonder what my response to my parents will be when they grow old with age.  Apart from the fact that many young people have experienced the divorce of their parents and are aware of the statistical probability of their own divorce, there hardly seems to be an expectation placed on them to care for the elderly.  In fact, most young people probably do not expect to even see much of their elders when they grow old.

It is interesting to see the shift among young people when they leave their family.  It seems to me that this change is really the beginning of the end of his authentic connection with his family, although he hardly realizes it at the time.  When you go off to college, you are forced to look forward and outward.  You do not intend to be coldhearted; it is just the point of your interests lies somewhere else.  For most the family was spiritually and relationally empty anyways, and so the act of leaving is accompanied with new visions to the neglect of past experiences. 

Then after college the opportunity to go farther away is afforded.  Everything is open.  You can live in the city or the suburb, in the West or the East, in the North or the South.  There are attractions to each and each is free.  The decision finally comes down to certain circumstances that have opened up doors to a job or relationship which is likely to take him far away from all the people and experiences he has been connected with.

This open-ended future can be quite damaging.  It produces a soul that can often feel spiritually cluttered, unconnected, isolated, with no conditional bond with anyone or anything.  It produces a self that is prone to plasticity, often changing from one thing to another, a million different options from one day to the next.  Worse, it leads to feverish activity.  With no sense of direction or origin, going to nowhere from nowhere, you feel as if you are running in sand and you are unable to track your progress because your footprints are so quickly blown away by all the change.  This whole experience could be called multiple overwhelming.

It is at that point when the urge to return to your roots is felt.  The mind begins to race.  The heart begins to pound.  The pulse begins to throb.  The soul feels its roots.  And the body weeps.  Perhaps I know now why one of my favorite novels is Camus’ The Stranger.