I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of life's wisdom.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
'Suffering should not make us bitter people,' my mother once said, 'it should make us better comforters.' Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they'll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.
Children, even infants, are capable of sympathy. But only after adolescence are we capable of compassion.
In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.
I've been blessed to spend time with young people and help encourage an environment where it's comfortable for them to be who they are. That's precious for children.
We all have to face pain, and pain makes us grow.
We are all somebody's children, and when we're in pain, we regress, instinctively looking to our parents to make everything better.
So many young people are coming out of a generation that has experienced deep woundedness and brokenness, and they are full of life. They are eager to engage. They care about community, and they care about one another.
I always knew that 'Growing Pains' was not going to go on forever. I remember thinking, 'I'm going to enjoy every moment of this.'
Young alienation, disappointment and heartache is all a part of the first real growing up that we do.
When they are assailed by despair, young people should let universal concerns into their lives.