Tough
Times
“When I
was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my
house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.”
Bruce
Springsteen
I ran across this quote
while trying to discover where Inspiration was hiding this morning.
Sometimes, she's a fair hand at being immaterial or missing
altogether. When I read it, I laughed out loud. Bruce Springsteen is
one of my favorite musicians—he's gritty, he's honest, and he's
technically fantastic. I've seen him in concert and he just belts it
out for three solid hours. Now we know where all his angst-ridden
songs come from—that unhappy childhood! There are some benefits to
growing up hard.
You may be saying, “Are
you crazy! There's no benefit to growing up hard.” And I would have
to agree that it isn't ideal. But it's rather like sand in an oyster
shell—it gives you something to rub against, something to cut your
teeth on. I see lots of children today who grow up with simply too
much—too much approval, too many material possessions, too much
parental attention. They learn to think life revolves around them,
and it is their perfect right to have that be the case. Once they are
out in the world, they don't know how to handle failure. They're
devastated by criticism. When you are raised in a tough family, you grow a thicker skin, you learn to deal with adversity, and you
realize that life is not going to cut you any deals, so you'll need
to make your own.
Bruce Springsteen goes on
to say, “But, I think your entire life is a process of sorting out
some of those early messages that you got.” He does that sorting
process by writing songs. Whether the messages we received in
childhood were too good or truly difficult, we are shaped by them. If
we want to grow and develop, we spend much of the rest of our life
putting the pieces in order. We can benefit from the sand in our
oyster shell, as he has done, or not. It helps to have friends who
will walk the path with us, and it helps to be a friend who walks
the path with others.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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