Quote of the Day - 04/04/2012

We are not unlike a particularly hardy crustacean....With each passage from one stage of human growth to the next we, too, must shed a protective structure. We are left exposed and vulnerable, but also yeasty and embryonic again, capable of stretching in ways we hadn't known before. - Gail Sheehy in Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life

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What do you think about the analogy made in this quote…that the passage to the next stage of human growth requires shedding of our ‘shell’ like a crustacean?

For me - the most recent passages have been more gradual and not like the abrupt shedding of an entire ‘protective structure.’ I was able to anticipate the passage and do practice stretching before it happened. Instead of a single physical milestone there were more complex and multiple psychological milestones.

Still - I like the analogy of the crustacean in the sense that being aware of the protective structures we have and noticing when they restrict our growth is probably key to our continued development whether or not it is a ‘passage from one stage of human growth to the next.’  

How aware are you now of the components of your ‘protective structure?’

Quote of the Day - 2/18/2012

She awoke from long childhood in which she had always been protected and surrounded by attention and comforts, and not responsibilities. - Isabel Allende in The House of the Spirits: A Novel

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Two thoughts on today’s quote: 

1. It is interesting that we associate childhood as a time without responsibility. Our laws embed the concept in our formal legal system. But having or not having responsibility is not a binary thing. It is more accurate if we think of a child’s growth as a continual path of increasing levels of responsibility. At some point a child becomes responsible for dressing themselves, putting food in their own mouth, completing a household chore, completing homework without prompting, getting their first job, etc. At what age do they cross a threshold that says they are no longer a child? Certainly when they are financially independent…but probably before and the use of age is a simplifying criteria for our legal system which may work on average but not for all individuals.
2. In the past, the optimum in our culture was for women to continue in a child-like state (i.e. without acknowledged responsibilities) for most of their lives. The things that they did were important to their families but were not appreciated by society as responsibilities. The quote reminds us of the awakening that happened for many women as that ideal began to crumble.