A Generation Grows Up--Quickly

Where men are concerned, time does what it does quickly. Each hour adds its weight of impression to the total impressions of life. Each day adds some strength to the force of habit. Each week adds to the structure of character. Opportunities to teach youth are perishable: they pass quickly and may never come again. It would be impossible to say when the critical time of a boy’s or a girl’s life is going to be, but if as parents we should become too busy or too preoccupied to keep close to our children, to keep counsel with them, we might find any time that we had missed a perishable opportunity in a critical situation. Because we who have lives longer may have found principles and purposes that give stability to our lives, we may sometimes conveniently assume that these same sources of stability will somehow, automatically, become known and understood by our children as we understand them. But, unless we conscientiously exert ourselves in passing on the lessons of life that we have learned, we have no right to this assurance. True, it is convenient at times to assume that our children are hearing what they should hear, that they are reading what they should read, that they are seeing what they should see, that they are learning what they should learn, that they know what they should know—but if we assume all this too lightly we may find that some of them have been led into the error of believing that old fallacies and ancient evils are new and smart and modern. A generation grows up quickly. A few short years of neglect, and a generation grows up in confusion. Let no parent assume for convenience that there is enough time to consider these things at one’s leisure. Let no parent become too preoccupied to be concerned about the perishable opportunities for teaching youth. Where men are concerned, time does what it does quickly—as a generation grows up, listening and learning and taking their places among us.