they get more ordered

 

many wheels aren’t squeaking

“when the going gets tough,

the tough get going,”

a truism that describes one way

that challenge can be a stress test

that brings out the best in us,

adolescence is a major stress test of the system,

as hormones and developmental change wreak havoc

on the comfortable stasis that can be late childhood,

add a pandemic, with its wrenching change to social possibilities,

and change to the feeling of stability to the universe,

and, “Katie bar the door!” the world can be topsy-turvy,

how do young people respond to it all?

some as if wired, manic in their need and action for the social,

even when all their frenetic energy doesn’t really get them anywhere,

like those cartoon characters running off a cliff,

their legs churning powerlessly, fruitlessly, over an abyss,

and in that frenetic driven time mistakes can be made

and draw our attention, something wrong with the Force,

meanwhile, some young people are quieter, more focused,

when the going gets chaotic, they get more ordered,

they pull thoughts and self together

to continue to move bud to flower,

to continue the risk of assertion of self

in writing, in projects, in discussion,

in athletics, in art, in connection to others,

our attention is drawn to the wheels that squeak,

how glorious it is that so many wheels 

spin and work with purpose at the same time that others squeak,

the machine of the self working itself forward, inexorably,

the product revealing itself before us feels right and true

to what the Maker within hopes to create with every one of us,

I celebrate each step of each successful making.

by Henry H. Walker

October 26, ‘22