Slow Havamal: 88

[kylec]

The 88th verse warn against putting too much trust in your new child or your early crops. Weather and whim will shape them, and they will change.

This verse splits 87 and 89 in order, though not in sense, which is why we treat it after verse 89. It does follow the same theme, though. Instead of things in stages that render them dangerous, we find them in stages of great promise, and have to remember that nothing stays the same.

For the parent, a young child seems to contain the future in its purest and most promising form. While we know it isn’t yet decided, much of our adulation comes from the possibility of good. Where an old man’s life is lived, and stands as it is, we can hope the child will remain sweet and curious, and be spared the torments of previous generations.

This is an interesting contrast to the way we think about many other things, including ourselves. At a certain point, we turn from future-oriented to past-oriented. We expect of people what they have been, rather than what they can still become. We tie shortcomings to their backs, and insist they go only as far as they can carry what preceded this moment. There is some truth to it. All of our thoughts and deeds etch us, and those pattern are easier to continue than to overcome. The child has few, compared to the adult, thus the easiest path to the good life—at least if your culture doesn’t buy into reincarnation.

But when we put too must trust in our sunny outlooks for our children, we fail to account for the histories they will accrue as they trade possibility for circumstance, one by one. This is perhaps a good thing. I wouldn’t want to look at a son and think, “your life will be a mix of misery and small victories, disappointments and attainments, amounting in all probability to as much as any other adult I know, neither spectacular nor dismal.” Our high hopes for our kids and crops orient us to do those things which will be most helpful to them, as far as we understand it.

They may exceed our expectations. We simply can’t assume it’s a given. What appeals to us so deeply in those early moments is an abstraction—a vague form that will grow more particular until it’s filled in by every detail. The youthful beauty and wonder will change. It has to. All things move through different forms on their journeys. Our job, as the tenders, is not to lock them into a perfect state, but to help them transition at every stage. Maturity comes through a process, and it will come better if we offer a gentle hand than if we attempt to freeze the organism in place, or stubbornly guide it to some personal, imagined future that grows more distant by the day, though we refuse to accept it.

As in recent essays, we deal not with eternal states but with ongoing processes. It will do us well to keep that in mind, even as we admire the beauty of life in its current form.