On Children’s Personal Growth and Moral Development

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
Kahlil Gibran

I recently visited my daughter who has made some very conscious and deliberate choices about her lifestyle. I was expecting some big changes in her living circumstances, but it is one thing to imagine her situation and another one to actually experience it. When I parked my rented Toyota Camry in front of her dilapidated apartment with its unpainted woodwork, unkempt yard, and rundown stairs my heart felt a deep tug. It was a rainy and cold afternoon so there was very little light coming in through the windows to lift my spirits and my first impression was a shocking feeling that my precious child was living perilously close to poverty.

It didn’t take me long to realize, though, that there was joy and poetry in her little home, decorated as it was in an Early Salvation Army style, full of hand-me-downs and salvaged objects. Her artistic and egalitarian streak showed in her arrangements of furniture, lighting, and wall décor. Everything she had put together “made sense”. It was truly her expression of who she is, her values, and her choices. Instead of pity I felt pride and gratitude for her life.

It gets even better. This young woman I had so carefully nurtured and protected invited a close circle of her friends to have dinner with us. One of them was single and came with her shaggy, boisterous dog, another brought her sixty-something mom, a third one brought her ten year old daughter, a fourth one came late and left early because she’d had to wait to tuck her children in bed and had to return to care for her family. And what cultural diversity in the group! Yet these were all strong, committed women who live for and out of their convictions, share their joys and sorrows with each other, nurture each other’s passion for art, and try to help each other grow. Out of their deep sharing, a strong bond has formed that does not leave anyone out.

So today I celebrate the richness of my daughter’s life, the joyful attitude she has developed through her handling of life’s big and small hurdles, the way she manages her money and allows herself profound pleasures. I celebrate her courage in choosing a simple and healthy lifestyle and practicing her values in everything she does. This woman is not perfect (I could write a whole blog on her weaknesses and idiosyncrasies that drive me nuts), but today I recognize those wonderful character traits that I value so much and have brought us so close together. She has built them through her moral courage and her profound reflections on her experience of limitations and tears.