In this short series against society’s systematic destruction of the virtues of childhood, it is notable that, in a performance of the Yale University’s Whiffenpoofs, 13 talented students who tour singing a cappella, that one of their featured numbers is Simon and Garfunkel’s hit from 1970, “The Boxer.”
It begins, “I am just a poor boy, Though my story’s seldom told, I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, Such are promises. All lies and jest. Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy, In the company of strangers, In the quiet of the railway station, running scared, laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go looking for the places only they would know.”
That haunting song, which has endured as one of that duo’s greatest, has as its lyrics a first person hymn to the endurance of the human spirit against the crushing effect of being chewed up by abuse and loneliness on the mean streets of New York.
Who would have thought that privileged sons and daughters of an Ivy League school would relate to such lyrics? It speaks to the universal condition of a young person facing a world aligned to destroy his youthful optimism and hope.
There are countless examples in art and literature, of Tadzio in Thomas Mann’s novella, “Death in Venice,” of Billy Elliot in the classic film and musical by Elton John, in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.” In each case, the wider culture defines a context in which innocence is crushed, though in the case of Billy Elliot, the lad prevails against the initial prejudices of his own father.
So, what is the antidote to the systematic societal destruction of the creativity, happiness and innocence of youth? The answer lies generally in God’s mandate to Abraham not to kill his son Isaac, which comes at the very beginning of the long history out of which Judaism, Christianity and Islam grew. But clearly that mandate has not been followed within those faiths, at least in terms of their dominant forms.
Jesus taught his followers to become again as children, in the sense of all the attributes that that brings: a childlike innocence and sense of wonder and possibility for life, as well as acceptance and love for others beyond artificial racial or other differences.
Take the wonderful case of Christopher Isherwood in his pursuit of the Vedanta faith asking an elder if it was OK for him to love his same-sex and considerably younger partner, Don Bachardy. The swami told Isherwood that if he treated his younger partner as if he were a krishna, or manifestation of the divine, then it would be all right.
Isherwood saw to Bachardy’s desire to be trained as a portrait artist, which he was, becoming brilliant at the skill. As exemplary, the official portrait of Gov. Jerry Brown that hangs in the California State Capital is a work of Bachardy.
Also, there’s the example of the teacher (Robin Wiliams) in “The Dead Poet’s Society.”
On the other hand, in “Death in Venice,” as a beautiful film by Luchino Visconti from 1971, it was the inability of the adult to break through his own internalized limitations to offer the boy a pathway of eluding the pressure to succumb to mediocre adulthood that was the great tragedy there.
Then Peter Pan in J.M.Barrie’s story leads his young followers on a great adventure. But when it is over, as Barrie wrote a final chapter, Peter Pan’s charges grow up into mundane and boring lives. The solution was Peter’s, to never grow up..
In Orson Welles’ classic film, “Citizen Kane,” the protagonist at the end of his life calls out for a remnant of his childhood and the special joy of life that it represented, as contrasted to the pitfalls of an adult world even over which he had prevailed to become famous.and powerful.
We are called never to lose sight of the wonders and promises of our younger years, and to nurture others toward the same end.
