The functions of the human body unknown attained a mystical nature, especially that of women, with blood rivuleting the cut between her legs. Sudden awe and fear of such a torrent lasting days on end imbued that particular bodily mechanism with mystery that bordered on the sacred. Rituals were made from dirt and clay and action to make honor for such dimly understood events.

Into the modern age, the mystery of physiology faded as the rigors of reason attempted to beat out superstitions and assumptions from the human psyche. Puberty is transformed from a proud rite of passage to a shameful, brief hell in which the pubescent is condemned to exist within the unmerciful halls of public education where the natural event of becoming physically adult paints him a target of ridicule and derision. A paradigm shift of the perspective of growth: from honored elevation of childhood to adulthood, to demonizing puberty as an evil assaulting the bodily processes. Current social opinion of such a time in a child’s life derides the positive strengths and confidence as such that should be afforded such an transition our proud and elemental past understood and respected.

Without ritual respecting self and others in our inexorable progress to the grave, the world becomes a trinket, a giant toy disposable and expendable. Without self respect and understanding, how can we respect and appreciate the flurrying clockwork mechanism of Life, of which we are a cog? Without the ancient sentiments and reverence, we are lost in a technological stampede of Reason unreasonable in its drive towards the future as if it were a physical destination to be reached. The future is in the past, in our reckoning of the world passed on to our children, and it is our duty not to smear the human condition with irreverence and indifference.