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Last week, the web was rocked with news that Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old who was circumnavigating the world alone, had gone missing. Immediately, the response from parents the web over was to criticize her parents: "who would let their teen do such a crazy thing?"
I think about the Walkabout in aboriginal culture -- the rite of passage for male adolescents involving spending as long as half of a year tracing the songlines, or paths, of their ancestors across the vast Australian wilderness -- and I think, "who wouldn't?"
The Walkabout is a major cultural initiation rite, and it's not the only one. Many Pacific Island cultures involve voyages at sea, and African tribes take initiates out of the community, as well. In Navajo culture, the three-day ceremony of Kanalda culminates in running toward the east at dawn to represent a young adult "running on one's own."
Traditionally speaking, there is nothing more human than commemorating the passage into adulthood by allowing a teen to set out on her own. Something that has been lost in our culture is the understanding that age doesn't automatically grant an individual the knowledge to be a resourceful member of society. Outside of getting a driver's license, graduating high school, being old enough to buy tobacco products, enter clubs and go to war if we choose to, we have little in the way of a true initiation rite.
I'm speaking generally now, because in my family, we do have something of a rite of passage: to set off to a different country and show what we're made of. I went to Russia. Shelter was arranged and I was given a little stipend, but the assistance was minimal and I wasn't there to make it through –- I was there to show my parents I could figure out how to have a blast, learn a language, absorb a culture with only my brain to help me. That's how they'd decide if I was going to be sent to college. Not on grades. I had a 3.85 GPA and my Associate of Arts degree at that point, but anyone can read a book.
Life isn't a book.
It's amazing how fast you can pick up a language when you have to. It's amazing how quickly you can overcome shyness when you're lost. It's amazing how much you can learn when you refuse the charted route and take a chance on the people and their own knowledge. And it's also amazing how strong you are when you have to fight. Or how fast you are when you have to run. It's amazing how all of these things teach you about assessing intangibles like benefits and risk.
I had always loved Russia, having grown up with a father who read me Pushkin, and spent my formative years devouring everything from Tolstoy to Chekhov. Until I read Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, War and Peace was my favorite book. But while these authors and the accompanying textbooks I read in history and geography class assisted in painting an image of Russia, none of it compared to seeing it with my own eyes and losing myself in its people and customs.
Forget the tours. Get an architecture student to show you the town. Ignore the train and drive from Moscow to St. Petersburg and stop as often as you can to really taste the beauty that hides between these two cities. Yes, taste the art, but don't forget the people on the streets, the living soul of that country that still beats, like a heart, day in and day out.
Sure, I partied like the best of them. I broke rules and got into my fair share of trouble with locals and with the authorities. I almost died after eating pesticide-coated cherries that I was told not to eat but did anyway because I was 17 and I thought I was invincible. That's life. Live and learn. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, smarter, braver, and maybe even a little wiser.
Darwin called it survival of the fittest, not the most coddled, for a reason.
Image by pete_the_painter via Flickr
My sister would make her own trip when she turned 17. She picked Peru to get back to her roots. Same deal, same amount of alcohol and shenanigans. Same amount of trouble. Unlike textbooks and trips carefully curated by mom and dad, real life is as much laughter as it is tears. When there's no one to bail you out, when it's
