Looking back at structures and the need to be little

 

I often feel pretty much that young child to be honest and Bertie the teddy bear is a constant companion of mine just there when I need a hug and a cuddle.

I was talking with someone about the past, yes I know we has a present an' a future too but the past has lessons for you and is after all where you started out from and some of ideas I think are worth sharing.

One is given our chronological (so-called real life) ages, we've seen the world and the Countries we've lived in change from when we were little girls quite dramatically with the removal of many a Dictator, the greater freedom of expression of thought, religious beliefs and for differing ways of life.

We can to a very large extent say what with think without being arrested or effectively suppressed, in countries that had one majority faith, we can join and practice freely another and this is good.

One thing that perhaps for some of us is a negative is the way in which we've moved from very prescribed boundaries to such a state of rampant individualism that challenges any notion of social norms in our society.

We care less about how what we do may impact on others, the sense in which we are (and certainly I and people of my generation) felt being a part of a society that had shared aims and standards of behaviour in public at least. 

Everybody pretty much knew what was expected of them and that included respect for (adult) authority at home, at school, in the workplace never mind that of the Police even if they weren't perfect.

Today it seems that very much the idea of any respect for social rules has gone-want that seat on the train, grab it even if has been reserved, if at odds with each other in the street then call each other cuss words loudly in front of the under 12's, and so on to the point that it's hardly surprising that the only rules teens see exploring their emerging selves is that of own peer group in that way. 

While we tested the boundaries too, you knew adult authority would step in and critically your own folks would support them as having been punished for coming home the worse for drink once I'm well aware of shall we say.

For some us part of our being 'little' be it in caregiver relationships, or being just 'a little' may stem from a longing for those certainties be they from your own upbringing or perhaps looking back on those of others, you wish for them.

It provides some of the structure  we find ourselves craving.