My most vivid of memory is of the three years that I lived in a little town in Saskatchewan from grade ten to twelve.
The vividness of memory is a clue to the importance of that interval in the life of that person, though it is only in retrospect that I can identify it as my coming of age. Nothing external changed during that period but the internal change, I believe in retrospect was enormous and that is why the memory is so indelibly imprinted. It was a happy time. You could say I found my feet. Not everyone can identify a defined period where coming of age is apparent and that is why, if maturation is gradual, the sense is less obvious. The best literature on the coming of age is associated with the drama of Bildungsroman in which the shackles or bonds of dependency are broken and separateness and identity is achieved in a rush. It makes for a great movie or novel but that was not my pathway. That the coming of age is an internal event where the clock is turned forward, is a blessing that is remembered vividly by an old man, kindly disposed to the little town where it happened to occur. I don't believe my psychiatric colleagues ever gave the coming of age period the importance that literature accorded it, to their fault. The genre of coming of age, particularly young men is so embedded in literature that it adds richly to the knowledge of the human condition!
The vividness of memory is a clue to the importance of that interval in the life of that person, though it is only in retrospect that I can identify it as my coming of age. Nothing external changed during that period but the internal change, I believe in retrospect was enormous and that is why the memory is so indelibly imprinted. It was a happy time. You could say I found my feet. Not everyone can identify a defined period where coming of age is apparent and that is why, if maturation is gradual, the sense is less obvious. The best literature on the coming of age is associated with the drama of Bildungsroman in which the shackles or bonds of dependency are broken and separateness and identity is achieved in a rush. It makes for a great movie or novel but that was not my pathway. That the coming of age is an internal event where the clock is turned forward, is a blessing that is remembered vividly by an old man, kindly disposed to the little town where it happened to occur. I don't believe my psychiatric colleagues ever gave the coming of age period the importance that literature accorded it, to their fault. The genre of coming of age, particularly young men is so embedded in literature that it adds richly to the knowledge of the human condition!
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