Who Knows But That, On The Lower

Many Of The Rites Of Passage, Those Rituals Of Growing Up Found In Our Society, Are In The Form Of Such Comic, Practical Joking Affairs--which We Ignore In The Belief That They Possess No Deeper Significance. Yet It Is Precisely In Their Being Regarded As Unimportant That They Take On Importance. For In Them We Ritualize And Dramatize Attitudes Which Contradict And Often Embarrass The Sacred Values Which We Proclaim Through Our Solemn Ceremonies And Rituals Of Nationhood.

At Best Americans Give But A Limited Attention To History. Too Much Happens Too Rapidly, And Before We Can Evaluate It, Or Exhaust Its Meaning Or Pleasure, There Is Something New To Concern Us. Ours Is The Tempo Of The Motion Picture, Not That Of The Still Camera, And We Waste Experience As We Wasted The Forest.

It Is Sometimes Advantageous To Be Unseen, Although It Is Most Often Rather Wearing On The Nerves.

And While The Ice Was Melting To Form A Flood In Which I Threatened To Drown I Awoke One Afternoon To Find That My First Northern Winter Had Set.

It Takes A Deep Commitment To Change And An Even Deeper Commitment To Grow.