Some people leave and never come back
Some stay in touch, some lose track
Since I am about to turn 18, I have started to think more seriously about my future. The ideas of being a knight, an “army man”, a professional soccer player, and a professional triathlete are slightly behind me (who knows?), and I am thinking about how I am going to support a family. One of the things that society and popular culture are telling me to do is to “become independent” and to “go away to college”. While I am intent about “growing up”, I have a few thoughts about college and independence. So, please set aside your collegiate spirit for a second, and hear me out.
The family is the main building block of society. Not the individual. This type of “individualism” is pulling our society apart. It stems from the disbandment of the family. The big family. By big, I don’t mean nine kids, though that is really great. I mean a multi-generational clan that all has the same ethic, the same standard. I mean a family like the Sacketts in the Louis L’amour series.
Here is the bottom line: the best way to defeat the enemies of the family is through the family. If we keep the family intact, you cannot break down society; everyone’s blood is too thick! How do we strengthen the family? Don’t move. Cultivate a “family first” mentality
We have a society where the first thing that people think about is where they are going to go to college, not about their family. Families say “we will make sacrifices, for their good!”, and send their kids away to college, but that is what got us into this hole. Don’t think that everyone just woke up one day and said that they were woke. That was a process of indoctrination by bad teachers in schools everywhere. And don’t think it is not intentional. Don’t think that the weak men you see nowadays are not part of it.
The reality is just what the song says:
Some people leave and never come back
Some stay in touch, some lose track
This is not what makes a healthy society. We send our kids away to college and hope they come back, but the reality is that they probably won’t. Think about it, the two reasons you go to college are 1) to get a job or 2) to find a spouse. Going away to college, even a Catholic college, is going to take you farther a field. Each college has their own partners, their own recruitment methods. What are the chances that you will be lucky enough to get a job in your home town? Also, why would your spouse want to go back to your hometown, if she has never been there? There are always exceptions, but the reality is that your spouse is not attached to your community like you are unless she comes from the same community.
Why do we leave home before getting married? The bible says that a man “shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one”, but it doesn’t say anything about going to college, leaving home to “become independent” or anything like that. As far as I can see, being married has nothing to do with being “independent”, you rather become a dependable spouse (or a really bad one, I guess).
Why do we say that young people need to “step off the sidewalk”? To be “independent”, and to “fend for themselves”? Is this what we want for them? Is it the best thing that they live alone in a dorm with some random roommates and cook their own meals, “living for themselves”? Is that the way the world works?
Do we want independence? Is that what a health society strives for? Or do we want a loving, caring family around us who will stand with us even if we are old and senile?
Just think about it for a second: you go away from you home with your family to live in an apartment. Who does this?
Those who start in dorms end up in old folks homes.
Imagine if our “illustriously great president who is the The Secret Committee Formerly Known As Joe Biden” had a loving, caring family to tell him that he was too old to be president, and that he needed to stay home with his family. This isn’t happening, not only because of his family, but because of himself. He chose and raised his family this way, he is reaping what he sowed.
Now I am really beginning to sound old, but think about it in terms of your parents. Is a family who is scattered in all four corners of the country in a position to come a-running if any member of the family needs help, needs to be cared for? Seriously, these are the things that people need to think about. This is what keeps families together, or rips them apart.
In other words, we cannot become a society that has as it main idea that we have to “go away”.
I will have more coming on this later. I can write about this all day…