Time chunks, my perspective

Do you remember when your age was the new number that you were given each year?  You identified by it almost as much as your name.  It was a very important characteristic.  Sometimes when Blake is introduced to people, they'll say something like, "Hi Blake!" and his answer will be "I'm fee."  (Three)

I remember getting so excited to get a new number.  Like six to seven was memorable, because we were having a birthday out on the lake fishing from a pontoon boat.  I recall seeing a photograph of me holding up seven of my fingers with great pride!  The other day, a member of our ward came over, and asked Ian how old he was, "Seven and a half."  Remember when you were so proud of your half!?  It was a big deal!  Book-keeping was not an issue.  Now I have to compute and ask myself: what year is this, what year was I born, and have I had my birthday yet this year?  Honestly, I have a hard time keeping up.  Maybe that's part of the point.

When we were kids, there were lots of age-based transitions.  Kindergarten after you are 5, you could be interviewed for baptism at 8.  I remember being on vacation and getting teased (or supported?  whatever it was, it was attention that I felt awkward about) about becoming a pre-teen.  Oh dear.  A pre-teen!  Age 12 had it's own strangeness.  Then we would look forward to being a full-teenager, eligible for an age-based driving permit, then license.

The years ticking over felt so significant.  Part of that might have been that we dated all of our school papers.  I remember feeling the impetus of changing from 1992 to 1993.  Seriously.  1992 just flowed, it was a part of my state of being, then all of a sudden this awkward number 1993 came along.  It took some getting used to, and felt monumental.  Now the only significance of the year turning over is that my bank checks won't clear if I put the wrong date at the top.  (On the other hand, the seasons fly like I had never considered they could, and I feel like my babies are growing up way too fast.)

When I was a kid, I really looked forward to being a missionary, and saved my earnings in a bank account for that day when I would be an adult, living somewhere on my own, preaching the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  Fast forward to 2000 when I arrived to the Preston MTC and I felt like a big kid being asked to be mature and do something important.  My ability to fulfill that expectation (maturity!) probably ebbed and flowed a bit.  Most of the time, I felt like I had to keep answering the question of how such a young (baby-faced) American was allowed by his mother to live a continent away on his own.  I never felt shy or timid.  Though there was that one time when I ran into someone from my first area (after having been in England for more than a year) and they said they remembered how quiet and timid I had been as a new missionary.  (Really?  Or do they just say that to all missionaries?)

I got married at age 21, but didn't feel any disadvantage for it.  Marching through with confidence and dedication seemed to work in other realms of my life, so establishing a household would work out just fine.  There was this really odd feeling of being discounted as a inexperienced, non-contributor in one of our family wards in Utah.  I guess it was just the feeling of being pre-judged not based upon me, but upon my life status as a young newlywed.

This categorizing is inevitable, but pre-judging based on categories isn't really necessary.  Here are a couple of examples where I've seen some impacts of this tendency:

Undergraduate vs. Graduate:  At BYU, it seemed like the undergraduates generally didn't mingle with the graduate students.  Graduate students always seemed to be the old and wise, so focused, and their sense of fun was much more tempered.  (Maybe for many cases, this was true, but certainly not a rule!)

Newlywed vs. Oldywed:  In our married student ward at church, everyone was newlyweds (less than 5 years married), but it was interesting to watch how some of the 19-21 year old women had a hard time socializing with the 22-24 year old women.  I think there was one woman who was 27, and she was definitely an anomaly.   There were quiet appraisals of each other based upon child count, years before graduation, and other external factors.  I think Jen and I did a decent job of not looking after these external  judgements and mingling with people of a variety of vital statistics, but not everyone found it so easy.

Renters vs. Owners: In our current ward, when we moved here it seemed like people welcomed us well enough, but when they heard we were renters (instead of home owners), that our tenure in the ward was already doomed, and perhaps our value (long term) to the ward was in question.  And yet, we've been renting the same place for nearly 7 years, and I think we've done a good enough job at demonstrating our stable, steady contribution.  Perhaps in some ways, the perspective of time/tenure is shifted since we include a military base, and a long-time member is anyone who has been here longer than the 3-4 years of a military rotation.

I guess the conclusion that I'm trying to illustrate is that there's a natural tendency to create a perspective that hinges upon age, that actually discounts (or promotes) a person purely on life status.  Here's a potential application--from that verse in Timothy 4:12, I think the advice was at first about just acting like a true disciple, regardless of how people might pre-judge you:

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

But what would happen if we also made a concerted effort to apply this in reverse:

Avoid judging another person's youth or seniority; but see their qualities as believers, in their words, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.