Rite of passage important for youths
What the kids talked about later, of course, was the chocolate fountain on the dessert table. Two fountains, actually: one milk chocolate, the other white chocolate. Some of our sons and daughters returned home from the bar mitzvah party last weekend looking like painted warriors from the Godiva tribe. My son is almost 13, so we’ve been invited to several bar mitzvahs this year. As if overnight, kids we have known since kindergarten are taller than their fathers, delivering speeches about the Torah in voices more like a man’s than a boy’s.
You can’t sit through a bar mitzvah without wishing that every teen-ager had the benefit of a public rite of passage, a ritual that recognizes their readiness for greater independence and responsibility – and that forces parents to acknowledge, on the record, in front of witnesses who can be summoned by the teen-ager later, that it is time for them to shift from managers to consultants.
For parents, the ritual is worth the expense and effort if for no other reason than to have our 13-year-olds in the same room with us long enough to hear all the advice that’s been gurgling inside us since approximately their birth. (Most of us rely on the element of surprise to deliver advice to our teen-agers, shooting off comments then retreating before they can activate the sigh and the eye-roll.)
If our teens had a ceremony marking the end of childhood, we would tell them they are at the most exciting and befuddling juncture of life – that middle ground between jungle gyms and college dorms. We’d say this is when the choices they make become stones on a path that will lead to the person they want to be.
We would want them to know that who they become truly is about their choices – not ours, not their teachers’, not their rabbi’s or pastor’s. So they should let what is best in them guide their way.
Of course, we would say, they will still make some really awful choices now and then. They should put fences around them and move on. But first learn from them the way a scientist learns from mistakes in the lab: Say, OK, that didn’t work – where do I go from here?
We would tell them they don’t get to do this life over. Whatever they make of high school and college – that’s it. One shot. They should make it count for everything they can. And not just academically. They should meet people.
Have fun. Take risks. Allow themselves to fail; failure isn’t fatal. Be courageous and bold. Listen. Everyone they meet has something to teach them. (Even really irritating people can teach them tolerance and patience.)
As someone once said, popularity comes from allowing oneself to be bored by people while pretending to enjoy it.
We would tell them they are, right now, like a Polaroid photograph just ripped from the camera.
They see only the shadowy outline of who they will be. In time the details will emerge: the colors that are distinctively theirs, the funny, grouchy, tender mix of shapes and characteristics that turn them into adults maybe we like, maybe we don’t, but who are definitively themselves.
We would tell them that square of Polaroid film belongs to them, and aside from those elements that are God-given, they get to decide what will be on it. If others try to get them to add a splash of chartreuse or fill in the background with skyscrapers or garbage dumps, they get to say, “No, I’m going with lavender and haystacks.”
They should always remember, we would say, what might be the best guide to a happy life. It comes from baseball legend Satchel Paige.
“Work like you don’t need the money,” he said. “Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.”
And always get a seat near the dessert table.
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Send comments to her in care of this newspaper or send her e-mail at joanryan@sfchronicle.com.