Various cultures around the world have what is sometimes referred to as the “Right of Passage”—a ceremony conducted at the time a young boy is either at an age of maturity or has simply matured to a point where the tribal leaders feel he should become a man. It is interesting that most primitive tribes have such a ceremony, but civilized countries do not. How is it that a young person becomes a man in our society? There are various points that both young people and their parents may consider signs of maturity. Graduation from junior high school, then graduation from High School, and going off to college in another city are some such accomplishments. If the youth did not go on to college, his first full-time job might represent maturity. The above are all outward signs and have nothing or very little to do with the individual’s level of personal maturity. Some people never do become mature and depend on their parents for support and for them, life is a playground. Some of them even marry and become the wards of their spouses. However, most young people do, in fact, mature sooner or later and will become self sufficient and raise children who will go through the same periods of growth and maturity. I happen to like the idea of a ceremony for both young men and young women where, if they pass, they themselves, will feel that they are ready for the responsibility of adulthood. Why? Because they were successful in passing through the “right of passage.” The Cherokee Indians had such a right of passage ceremony. According to legend, this is what they were expected to do: The father takes the young man into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN. He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own. The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some enemy tribesman might do him harm. The wind blows the grass and whistles through the trees, but he has to sit stoically, never removing the blindfold. It is the only way he can become a man! Finally, after a horrific night, the sun appears, and he removes his blindfold. It is only then that he discovers that his father was sitting on the stump next to him. He had been at his side the entire night, protecting him from harm.
The legend above made me stop and think what I did, or think I did, to become a man. My youth was much different than youth in today’s world. I had my first job when I was eleven, selling newspapers on a city street corner. A year or two later, I got a job setting pins in a bowling alley. I started out working only one lane or alley. After just a short time, I was working two alleys at the same time. That was a sign of being a hard and fast worker. To keep up with two alleys was not easy. I had a lot of little jobs as a young boy, and, for the most part, I made all my own money for most all of my needs. I joined the National Guard when I was thirteen and was honorably discharged after my three years of duty were up at sixteen. That was about five months before I was old enough to join at seventeen. My parents would be considered lower class, from a financial point of view, for my Dad could not afford a car for most of the time I was a teenager. As soon as I turned 15, on February 5th of 1949, halfway through the ninth grade, I quit school so I could go to work full time. One of the first things that I did after I left school was to buy an old car so that I would have transportation to get to work. I always had work, but some of the jobs were short term. In the summer of my 17th year, I got a job as a hod carrier for a brick company that was working on a bank building in downtown Pullman, Washington. I built scaffolding, mixed mortar, carried brick. I did whatever and wherever was needed on that job. That experience eventually lead to my becoming an apprentice bricklayer a few months later. When I turned 19, I was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean Conflict.
I served as a military policeman at the Sixth Army Headquarters in San Francisco. This was three years after I was discharged as a National Guardsman. I eventually married and graduated with a PhD from a the University of Utah. Education is actually growth without beginning or end. The world does not give to man—it creates him.
The question, I suppose, is at what point did I pass the right of passage or become mature enough to be considered a man? That is a good question, and I am pretty sure it was a lot earlier than most young men in our society today. I was making mature decisions by the time I was twelve or thirteen, decisions that would affect the rest of my life. But we tend to break life up into somewhat measurable sections. My “Right of Passage” was informal, but I can see where I definitely had such an experience. Like the Indian youth, I, too, was never really all alone. My Dad was there for me had I faltered. Fortunately, I never did, but I believe, had I done so, I would have been able to go to him. Families were established by God to provide for the needs of youth. In life we are never alone. God, the Father of us all, is also watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us. When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him. The moral of the story: Youth become men and/or women through one process or another, and just because they can’t see God sitting beside them, protecting them, doesn’t mean He is not there. “For we walk by faith, not always by sight.”