Through My Eyes

Driving home last Friday I witnessed them arriving in their thousands, the look of anticipation and adventure shining in their youthful eyes. My immediate thought was to warn them off and preach vigilance.I guess my foremost blessing today is that I do not have a daughter and that my sons have been experiencing the Rage for at least five years before their own one arrived, so they know what to expect.

My mom has made her guesthouse available for Rage this year. She is so clever about it. Each student had to sign a legal agreement regarding noise and general behaviour.But she too had the shock of her life when one of her students, who has already been staying with her for three days arrived smashed out of his head, walked up to her and asked "Excuse me Maam, do I stay here?" when she confirmed this, he simply turned around got into his car and drove away.

She phoned me shortly afterwards and asked, "What do you think that is about?" I could only shrug my shoulders. For many of these young people, Rage is a coming of age ceremony and I guess time to experiment.My son Dominic is taking full advantage of the Rage fever. He is out there somewhere having fun and I had no choice but to let him go. Trust me there was no way I could possible stop him. All I can do is pray and hope that whatever he decides to do, will be the right thing to do.

This brings me to my favourite passage by Kahlil Gibran On Children, "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you"

I can live with that.

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing lymphatic drainage, digito-puncture specialist, Lucien Bonnet. In our interview he told me that he had a death experience, which changed his life.Lucien spoke of the afterlife with fantastic clarity and total conviction. He said that if we could all see how beautiful and peaceful it was on the other side we would give up the whole business of dreading death and actually look forward to the event, its not as if we can do anything about it.

No matter how much we want to protect our children from harm...no matter how much we try and shield them from the bad elements, they will have to go out there and present themselves to the big wide world and we must have the clear conscience of letting them go knowing full well that we have done everything we could to prepare them for it

Here is to being young and adventurous!

Maybe we should all enjoy a bit of juvenile unperturbed funI would love to see my son's reaction to my Rage plans