Anne Atkins
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Anne Atkins |
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It's one of those pieces of research I love. Like chocolate makes you happy or blondes have more fun. Now it's childhood is less carefree than it used to be. No, really?
Studies have shown for some time that we're not getting happier as we get richer - though I realise, if you've just lost your job, you might think a spot of dosh might come in pretty handy for cheering you up. Nevertheless, the evidence is sound. Over the last half century we've acquired twice as much money and a lot more misery. Children in particular exemplify this. Their depression and anxiety have increased alongside their material well-being. At first it seems counter-intuitive. Wealth should bring ease and security. But psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in this programme on Saturday, made the link between success and stress. Presumably the better you're going be at your job, the more time and energy you must invest in it - which is bound to leave you less elsewhere. Which is going to affect your children.
I remember our history teacher describing a cruel experiment in an eighteenth century French orphanage. A hundred babies were fed and warm and clothed. But they were not picked up or cuddled or spoken to, she told us. Every one died. I've never been able to trace the account, but I've never forgotten it.
Children need their basic physical needs met: of course they do. But after that, what they care about most is relationships. I saw this eloquently demonstrated in a family I'm intimately involved with. They suddenly found they had nowhere to live, and were scattered hundreds of miles from each other, moving from friend to friend: what was described on yesterday's programme as "middle-class homeless". The adults and older children were deeply traumatised by the experience. The one who seemed unscathed was the two-yearold. There was never a day when she wasn't with someone she loved and trusted, and that was enough. What did it matter to her whose roof was over her head or where she would be tomorrow? Today, she was hugged and kissed and tucked up in bed.
Jesus said we can't enter His kingdom unless we become as she was, a little child. And what is important to very young children? They neither know nor care whether their parents are top earning magnates with houses in Park Lane, or unable to afford a mortgage on the Old Kent Road. What they need, which lasts their life long, is to be loved unconditionally, preferably by two people who also love each other enough to stay together forever.
This is what Jesus' teaching is all about. He too doesn't care whether we achieve observable targets or meet measurable project objectives, but that we should love each other with truth and integrity, commitment and compassion. His Kingdom doesn't offer any assurance in terms of where we'll live or even whether we'll have anything to live off. But it does give us a far more profound supreme security: I love you and you love me and we'll go through this together.
Invest somewhere, He said, where share prices never fall. And relationships are all we can invest in that will last into Eternity.