Let’s Offer Children Faith in Ourselves

Re “When Children Look to Us, Offer Them Faith in Themselves” by Michael Harris (Commentary, Dec. 1): It is a dismal world indeed that we offer youth if it contains only bad food, bad community (“gangs”) and sex (which somehow equates with “bad”). Are these the only choices? Do we not trust our children to see a better world?

From where does this lack of trust involving our children come? Is it perhaps a lack of trust we hold for ourselves that we are so ready to project outward onto our children? Do we secretly require our children to live the lives we were incapable of living? Have we failed in some way? Perhaps we need to look more closely at the values we try to hold onto so dearly.

Instead we have something truly beautiful to give. What we have to offer is ourself, our own inner truth, and consequently a faith in ourself that comes from being in touch with this truth. This is a process of unfolding that takes place in every human being. Wisdom must begin within. We as adults need to look within our own hearts.

We must never tell our children, “Just use condoms!” We must talk to our children about our sexuality, our experiences in growing into mature sexual relationships. The condom could be viewed merely as a symbol of deeper relationship. Its use implies taking responsibility for our love of another and thereby entering more deeply into the realm of true spiritual intimacy.

Saying “No!” to sex is giving the message that sex is somehow equated with junk food or gang violence and that it is something that will only hurt us. In actuality, sex is a most glorious and joyous underpinning to the very fabric of our lives. It is the seam that weaves us into a rich social fabric. And it simply is! We cannot deny its truth.

Where there is intimate relationship there is instant gratification and infinite gratification simultaneously! Gratification is not something we take from another, but rather, something we share with one another.

So when children look to us, offer them faith in ourselves, the faith we have discovered by cutting through denial, repression, fear and mistrust. What we face at the other side is our own process of unfolding, bare and simple, neither gleaming with virtue nor seething with wickedness.

LEIGH UNGER, Santa Ana