ALL I HAVE IS A PHOTOGRAPH – CARPE DIEM

Recently, a photograph of a group of young people came to my attention.

We see a group of teenagers waist-high in a field full of wild plants holding various musical instruments. Somehow, the scene is reminiscent of 1960s photo shoots. I don’t know why, but it reminds me of the Pink Floyd during their psychedelic period when Roger (Sid) Barrett was indeed shining like a diamond.

The Fleeting Immortality of Youth
Apologies to the copyright holder(s): I do not know where this picture is from

This, however, is not the main thrust of this post. My aim is to comment on the momentary truth that the photo celebrates; we should never forget that the camera never lies – or at least before Photoshop it couldn’t lie so easily.

But, what does this photo really show us? 

A moment, perhaps, THE moment, in these young people’s lives. It is a moment when everything and anything is possible. Reality is suspended in the aspic of optimism and supreme self-belief. Are they going to be the next supergroup, or are they just a pretentious gang of kids waiting to go to university? Or both? Or neither? Which will become an addict of legal or illegal drugs? Which will indeed become influential in tomorrow’s society? Which will throw it all away? Indeed, will they end up in ordinary houses with ordinary, boring jobs?

Probably a couple of days after the photo was taken, there were at least two arguments leading to enmities which will last well into middle age. Probably the fellowship dispersed, its members going off to their several universities. What they believed to be eternally unbreakable bonds slowly weakened and stretched until they became almost imperceptible, invisible. Present but not really tangible. One day the only link with that summer day will be a Christmas card sent to  a parents’ address or a fleeting coffee, the result of a chance meeting.

Thus do the charmed circles of all adolescents weaken due to indifference or lack of contact and fade into memory. It happened to me. It will happen to mine.

However, while our children are members of such a magical fellowship and while they still believe in their geological permanence, we too should celebrate them. We should encourage them and we should never sneer with our world-weary knowledge. Envious experience whispering to us that soon the fellowship, like most fellowships, will atomise.

We need to remember our own teenage immortality and the subsequent immortality of our fellowships. Such fellowships never really fade away; they simply shift onto the next group of youngsters, down the line from adults to elder brothers and sisters to their more junior siblings. Like Buddhist souls, they migrate from one host to the next.

Next time your children want to talk to you about their own charmed circle, listen. Understand . Encourage. Ask about the circle. You might well be outside looking in, but invisible bonds tie you to the circle. The bonds of love that tie you to your children.

A protective wing
Original Art by an original talent

They are young and innocent – even when they are at university life still hasn’t begun to erode their perception of themselves as minor gods. Your children want to share their lives with you. Don’t lock the door and firmly bolt it with the “experienced” condescension of  adults. Wedge it   wide open with the enthusiasm of the child that you were. Remember; when a door closes it blocks movement in both directions. 

Don’t lock yourself out from your children with your supposedly superior knowledge and cynicism. Save the cynicism for the adult world. You might find that when you try to open the door you have closed, someone has changed the rusty, immoveable lock that you so trusted to protect yourself from your own fears and disillusions. Now it is you who cannot pass the threshold. You have effectively banished yourself from a profound part of your children’s lives.

As parents, our greatest ambition should be, externally at least, to surrender willingly to the grey ordinariness and boredom of a normal life outside the home. Inside you should keep these two silent, stealthily corrosive spectres at bay so that our children can, however briefly, caress immortality.

We do not just pass on our genes. We pass on, in a more subliminal form, our dreams. Usually, for purely pragmatic reasons, we are no longer in direct touch with this magical world where an afternoon in a field is of cosmic importance. This does not, however mean that we should deprive the shooting star of youth its blaze of beauty, glory and certainty.

Our task is to watch and wonder at this moment of sublime beauty and triumph. And, of course, remember it ourselves and lay down the memories that our children so lovingly and unselfconsciously give us.