March 26, 2021- There is an emerging sense of self, when a person turns eight. Individual responsibility has already become expected, a year earlier, and for those who can make sense of toeing the line, that sense of responsibility takes root. It is the full personality, however, that starts to shine, as one enters the ninth year of this life.
As with all new realizations, it takes time to be comfortable with the individual quirks and aspects of one’s personality. Like a sapling in a storm, a newly-emerging personality can be all too easily knocked over by unexpected or intense criticism, by reversals of fortune or just by one’s gnawing self-doubt-which is all too common, even in the child who is receiving a healthy amount of love from parents, family members and adults in school, as well as in the wider community.
It is all too real, for a child to be just lonely enough, that the power which comes with personality’s emergence goes unrecognized, buried by the growing conformity that is expected. That’s a shame, as to my mind, a community and a society can only be made more robust by the recognition and nurturing of an individual’s strengths.
I had the bounty of being able to hone in on the strengths of twenty four eight and nine-year-olds today. Granted, their socialization was such that the conformity, necessary to get a goodly amount of work accomplished, had already been established. It is not stifling, however, and the unearthing of individual power is something that would not be very difficult to bring about. The biggest impetus to such self-realization would be for the child to be enveloped by adults who are themselves not hobbled by their own powers being locked.
My energy will be ever directed towards these wondrous souls.
A Sagittarian Seeker 