Role models close at hand

Spirituality as a Journey of Human Maturation and Faith: Genetic-Psychological Approach

Polish Group
Justyn Krzysztof Malek
Sławomir Stanislaw Bartodiziej
Sodalis Joanna Maria Kozub
Dariusz Marek Szyszka

The synthesis of the sharing by the members of the Polish group:

All throughout life every human being participates, more or less concisely or unconsciously, in the process of taking and giving. It depends upon many factors, external and internal: culture, religion, upbringing, education, character, mentality, age, etc. whether the mutual exchange of what we offer to each other in life would be something that contributes more to one’s growth or to one’s destruction, true freedom or various forms of enslavement.

The time which is important in particular way is the time of adolescence. It is a passage period when one is expected to choose and make his own, what had been given to him in life until now. It is a time of clarifying on one’s project of life and its most essential aspects that one would like to follow, be faithful to them and deepen them along the time. The better one goes through this process the more chances one has to achieve in life greater personal integrity at various levels. It is rather difficult time, as being initiated into the world of adulthood, the young often go through crises of various natures, including their pubescent experiences.

Achieving a certain satisfactory level of integrity in life, as much as it is a very personal experience, it is, at the same time, an experience which takes place in the society among other people who serve as role models, guides, God’s gift to one another. Not only those big ones in the society, known by all, who are somehow far away. There is a need for the role models close at hand, whom the young can see every day, whose example and advice they can follow while facing the challenges of everyday life. There is a need, as always has been, for the loving presence of parents who assist the young in their walk of life and help them to cross the adolescence – adulthood bridge; presence that educates, cares, demands, encourages.

However, we have noticed that today, the issue of human integrity, is not only the problem of the young but of many adults as well. It seems that for many of them, their lives are still in pieces, like the scattered puzzles; often they are the ones who need to ask themselves about their life’s principals and integrity. How then a blind can lead another blind?

It seems to us that the trend, promoted in some circles, of the so called stress-less education, stress-less upbringing offered to the young, which often are allowed or even encouraged to do whatever they want, do not help the young to form a good and solid personal character. On top of that, in many cases, the young are given anything they want, almost any whim gets satisfied. That’s not the way forward, with this kind of freedom and pile of material things given to the young, one can hardly expect that maturity, responsibility, commitment and hard work will have any value to them. In fact it creates another society of people who wants to have everything fast - here and now, without knowing the elements of the process of achieving something with one’s efforts, which shape the character and contribute to one’s integrity.

The world is indeed very beautiful and our task as educators, parents is to help the young to discover this beauty in/with God, its Creator. Not so much by preaching to them about it but more by personal example how Jesus shapes our own lives, how our faith helps us to grow in humanity, helps us to search for unity and understanding among people rather than hatred and divisions.

People need to stop and answer the question: Where are we going? Today human beings are capably of so much, the technological development is incredible, however, how come, at the same time, more and more people feel like an inland? As one author said: “so many people around me but so difficult to find man (human being)…” Nothing in the world can be compared to the loving experience of another person, and that is how we grow, by sharing with one another our life experiences, its achievements and failures. And the time that it takes is the most beautiful gift we can offer to one another, especially to the young who need to lay down solid foundations of faith and Christian values that will take them in a victorious way through any trial in life.

Submitted by: Sławomir Stanislaw Bartodiziej