“Shifts In Adult Life Context” [Reflections on Book: Wm.C.King (ed) Portraits and Principles of The World's Great Men And Women Chicago: The King-Richardson Co. 1899 - #54/100]

The preparations made for life, are made in church and school;
At least they are in present day, enforced for saint and fool;
They take on auras of their own, these “Rules for life ahead”;
Indeed without them well-ingrained, as adults, we’d be dead.

When this book came to be, back then, it’s industry was king –
“Machine-age” had requirements which inter-mashed all things;
And in between the factories, grew up a “Business” class,
To harmonize and buffer – smooth machine-with-human clash.

The clocks were synced to keep trains safe across a nation vast;
The workers punched a clock for pay – “In first, and go home last”
Was seen as virtue – do not cost the enterprise to leak
A farthing from your slacking off – machines must work at peak.

Until that time who cared? “Kick back, chill out, relax, my man;
Don’t fight the weather, seasons, times, roll with it as you can;
It all works out in time, my friend, we’ve got eternity
Ahead of us, it’s just a start to life that yet will be.”

“Organic” was such life, I’d say, and kids learned how to cope
With adult life in school and church, each day that they awoke;
Such adult values, made for life, acquired veneer of “truth”;
And “Deep religiosity”, became “Life’s only route”.

When cultures clash, imperatives from adult ways of life,
Don’t always inter-mingle well, and so, lest there be strife,
Some people just succumb to truths the other adults hold,
While others strip it down for parts, accelerating hold –

On “Wealth” or “Happiness” or “Way of doing life back home”;
Some boundary-crossers richly gain from cultures they have known;
But mostly, change comes slow for folks; but once it is complete,
Entrenched it then becomes, backed with “religiosity”.

Inside such systems folks can’t see this larger picture, hence,
They rant upon the way of life they’ve known, declare from whence
They think it came (from God, of course, self-evident it is),
And that’s what this small item is, the “Way” their adults live.

Thanks Lord for this.

navigation