Conformity and Neoteny...

i have been realizing a lot lately that i have so much of a tendency to want to make others look like me. i think that we all have that tendency at least to some extent. i think that i am pretty bad about it though.

i have been realizing and noticing a lot lately that the "average" UCM student seems to look and be a lot different than the average purdue student. but why does that need to be the case...why does that even matter...God doesn't see them as different, at least not in the way that i am tempted to see them as different.

i pray that i can begin to figure out how to look at students as God sees them and not as i think that they should be.

i read a great word this morning...neoteny. it is the "retention of youthful qualities by adults". i think that is so true and so necessary and so what God desires of us. and instead of trying to make people look like me, i want to try to lead students to discover a neoteny that allows them to fully be the person that God has created them and is calling them to be.

i read about this neoteny in a book called "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day" by Mark Batterson and he says this about our creativity. i find it alarming and yet very motivating.

"I recently read a fascinating study on divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is intellectual originality. It is creative and counterintuitive thought. It is thinking outside the box. The study found that 98 percent of children between the ages of 3 and 5 score in the genius category for divergent thinking. Between the ages of 8 and 10, that number drops to 32 percent. By the time the kids become teenagers, it drops to 10 percent. And only 2 percent of those over 25 score in the genius category of divergent thinking."

that is incredibly sad to me. i pray that i can be a divergent thinker, and in so doing, that i can help other students not to be more like me, but to discover what it looks like for them to be a divergent thinker.