We’re looking for a housemate or two
pilgrimage to Eastern Orthodoxy and pacifism
Said Wendell Berry in What are People For?:
The natural or normal course of human growing up must begin with some sort of rebellion against one’s parents, for it is clearly impossible to grow up if one remains a child. But the child, in the process of rebellion and of achieving the emotional and economic independence that rebellion ought to lead to, finally comes to understand the parents as fellow humans and fellow sufferers, and in some manner returns to them as their friend, forgiven and forgiving the inevitable wrongs of family life. That is the old norm.
The new norm, according to which the child leaves home as a student and never lives at home again, interrupts the old course of coming of age at the point of rebellion, so that the child is apt to remain stalled in adolescence, never achieving any kind of reconciliation or friendship with the parents. Of course, such a return and reconciliation cannot be achieved without the recognition of mutual practical need. In the present economy, however, where individual dependences are so much exterior to both household and community, family members often have no practical need or use for one another. Hence the frequent futility of attempts at a purely psychological or emotional reconciliation.
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That’s all very well and you know I have much love for Mr. Berry, but does it actually reflect the reality of the people you know? It’s true that lots don’t live close to their parents but not sure all the rest of that stuff follows. Maybe our flat is not a broad cross section but all six adults here seem to have some manner of friendship with their folks.
Interesting point. I disagree with the essential need for ‘rebellion’ in the growing up process. Yet there needs to be some independence establishment process, but rebelling against parents is not the same thing. It is entirely possible to develop independence within the context of a maturing parent-child relationship without the breaking and subsequent reforging of entirely new relationship bonds as fellow adults.