My grandson recently fell and skinned his...nose.
It got me thinking — why do we react, or not react, the way we do...to events like skinned knees (or noses)?
And, I've concluded maybe we all should keep skinning our knees....
When a kid falls down and scratches his or her knee, we seem pretty much OK about it (a little more concerned when it's their face). But, the basics are there — we kind of know a few things about this situation and don’t really worry about it too much.
The reality is that skinning your knee (at any age), even it it feels uncomfortable or painful, is not too “serious". Somehow the bumps, bruises and scrapes of children on things like sidewalks are just part of what it takes for them to understand where and how to be careful — to learn what to watch out for, when to be cautious, etc. We empathize and hold them for a few minutes, but we don’t go overboard and we don’t take them to the hospital. We kind of know that, in some way, it’s a necessary part of their process of discovery in navigating a world where such things are learned about how to avoid some of the problems or things that can be painful in life.
But, here's another observation. It would appear that we have a decreasing capacity to handle much pain individually or as a society. Sometimes it feels like nearly any contrivance is an offense of epic proportions, and one hast to wonder what our kids are learning as a result of that kind of collective disposition to life. It’s almost as if we now have no tolerance for pain, dealing with it primarily by to trying to extinguish it all together with a rather wide variety of tactics.
Perhaps, like many things in our society, a lot of the remedies that we have are no longer viewed simply as situational enhancements. They have become the only means with which we know how to experience something. Take pain medication, for example, if we can't get it, then it appears at times that we think we will die. We know that’s not literally true, but psychologically it sometimes appears as if we believe it is.
Either way, the question might start to become, do we get too good at avoiding our skinned knees situations? Do we get too good at navigating and avoiding; anticipating everything that could result in the scrapes and bruises of life? I’m afraid, sometimes we do; at least, those of us who are privileged to have the option of making those kinds of choices. But, it’s also a little conspicuous that the flip-side of avoiding anything that would be a bump or bruise in life can end up keeping us from doing or trying anything.
The beauty of children and an unanticipated crack is...finish here.
