Springtime Awakening |
Monday Nov 24 2008
I went to the Broadway musical Springtime Awakening this evening. The last musical I cried in before tonight was Les Miserables. Springtime Awakening is an exceptionally intense, well produced and acted story about youth coming of age in Germany at some time in what would seem to be the early or mid-1900s. It is a story that has plenty of parallels today, including confronting hormone-driven questions about our sexuality, about friendship, teen suicide, parental sex abuse, back ally abortions and somehow dealing with the wounds of growing up.
But it is also about the failure to connect and communicate with parents and older people in general. It is about the isolated search for answers in a culture built on “Do as I say”, “Grown-ups know the truth” and “Learn to follow rules and not ask questions.” Parents and educators alike are portrayed as ‘roles’ that don’t listen, seemingly don’t care, and, at the end, are more concerned with their own image than the well-being of their children and charges.
The play was very effective in showing the price we all pay when we don’t listen to those who are younger than we are. We need to not just ‘understand’ the reality of our children, but we also somehow have to have empathy and learn to ‘see the world’ through their eyes. We need to learn as much as we have to teach. Our future depends upon it.
I am doing an inventory of all the younger people in my life and asking these questions:
- Do I have a genuine relationship with this person? Do I want to?
- Am I ‘myself’ when I am with this person? Do I feel safe to express myself without holding anything back?
- Does this person feel safe with me? Do they share their real thoughts and feelings about the important subjects in life?
- Do we appreciate each other and value our time together?
© 2008 Jim Selman. All rights reserved.
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with: intergeneration_relationship listening reality springtime_awakening
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