Clay

Are we destined to repeat the same patterns over and over? Couples that split inevitably pick the same type of person again and again, setting themselves up for failure. Our generation became proud at having stopped smoking pot, but now we drink. Dieters reach their goals, then backslide and have to start all over. The truth is, we are made from childhood. What our parents do or don't do to us forms these little psyches that rarely change. Sometimes, a catastrophic event happens that changes us, or sometimes we just get so disgusted with ourselves that we actually become disciplined and just do it.

Aging mellows us. We realize that those precious children are so vulnerable to our actions. They are being formed like clay with every word we speak, every gesture, every hug given or withheld. That's why God gives children to the young. They need to be disciplined and grandparents are too soft. I wonder what the future will be like. So many couples waiting to have kids until they are older, and so many grandparents raising their grandchildren because the parents are out of the picture. It is bound to have an effect on all of us.

Yet, grandparents play an important role in the life if a child. They need a break from the parental domain, where everything is the way the parents want it. Grandparents let them breathe, let them be silly, let them have fun, and they join in as well. It gives kids an outlook that there is hope, there is unconditional love. Not that the parents don't love them, but the kids feel that they can never disappoint the parents or that love may go away.

It should be interesting, now that so many natural roles have been changed. Parents dying or leaving, or in jail. Parents working and rarely spending any time with the kids. They are raising themselves much of the time, or in the care of strangers. We are destroying ourselves from within. All we can hope for is that the human spirit will prevail, as it always has. But at what cost?