Symbol & Sign 5: Role Models and Expectations

When I first saw my daughter standing next to her present husband, it was almost 20 years ago and they were going to his senior prom. I had a very strong sense of something in the future. I did not sense anything like they would end up being married; what I felt was there was more of this story to come.
So as time went on, they went their separate ways with rare contacts. They communicated more by means of Facebook in 2007, and by Christmas 2008 they were engaged.
When I was told, I said "It's about time!"
I meant that it was about time to get a helpmate in the times we were in, and I meant it was time to put a check mark next to the continuation of the story that had been sensed almost 20 years ago.

So engagement, wedding, first year. There have been some rough patches. I wondered if they could hold on like only 50% of people do, the ones that make it work. Being incredibly self-centered, I also wondered if my presentiment was merely a fluke or a wishful thought, based on nothing, and would everything come to naught.
They have driven through the rough patches so far, and as we know, that's all for the good, because they are certainly even more rough patches to come in life: one heck of a lot more.

But getting back to my premonition of their being together, it is hard for people to live up to someone else's expectations, no matter what those expectations are based on, whether it's wishful thinking or a bolt from the blue. People are not story books, and they cannot live up to the scripts of fancy we have in our minds.
Look at President Obama! Lord, in our utter sense of disorientation we made the man into almost a saviour! No wonder people felt that he let them down! Who could have possibly lived up to our expectations and what we so fervently wished for?

Look at role models in sports or entertainment: they are thrust into our consciousness all the time, but they find it impossible to maintain a level of conduct appropriate for a role model. In the old days, there was not nearly so much real-time news, paparazzi, and videos being shot - not to mention cameras on telephones that snap your picture while you are taking a hit off a bong!
In the old days, there was just the sports reporters and there was a gentlemen's agreement about what not to cover.
Then there's Tiger Woods. It took a conspiracy to keep philandering of that magnitude under wraps. But symbols - role models - are felt to be important, especially in the business of lucrative endorsements for sports products.

In short, sometimes it takes a whole village..........

It takes a joint effort to cover up the sins and to let the guilty go free...

And it takes a community effort to make things better and as they should be. And looking from this point of view, if we continue to fail, the sins of the fathers will indeed be visited upon their children!

(We already know this when we casually speak of how we are mortgaging our children's and their children's futures: we are saying that our sins will be passed onto our progeny and instead of being mortified, we just shake our heads and wonder what to do!)


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