By turning our culture over to the spectacle of child stars and their growing pains, we simply wind up taking their childishness seriously and ensuring that they don't grow up at all. And neither do we.
Interpretation
The quote critiques society's obsession with child stars, suggesting it hinders their growth and reflects our own immaturity.
Tom Junod's quote highlights the potential dangers of idolizing child stars and the spectacle surrounding them. By placing undue focus on their lives and struggles, society risks not only stunting the development of these young celebrities but also reveals a reluctance to confront maturity and responsibility ourselves. It suggests that both the child stars and their audience are caught in a loop of childish behavior that fosters immaturity.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of celebrity culture on youth, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for maturity.
It is insufficient to say that my experience as a bully haunts me. Rather, my experience as a bully has been fundamental to the creation of my conscience, because it is what prevents me from making the basic human claim that I am a good person.
Storytellers all, we humans might run out of time even as we triumph over the problem of running out of space. But we will never run out of stories.
That's the first thing you learn when you busk in the New York City subways: you immediately join the ranks of the marginalized, the unhinged prophets, the Christian shouters, the Hare Krishnas, the Jehovah's witnesses, the father-and-daughter kitaro team, the violinists playing for their sickly wives.
Cooking is, to me, the perfect fusion of generosity and selfishness, indeed the resolution of generosity and selfishness, the answer to my torn nature.
I cook so that there is no absence. I cook so that I am always there, even when I'm gone, even when I die, and my cooking translates in my daughter's memory as, simply, this: time.
The premise and promise of Big Data is that there are no stories, only patterns; that the human preference for story is aligned with the human tendency for error; and that only through dislocations in scale - the scale of sample size and of time - will truth emerge.
One day, it was suddenly revealed to me that everything is pure spirit.
Wrath, unlike love, is not one of the intrinsic perfections of God. Rather, it is a function of God's holiness against sin. Where there is no sin, there is no wrath-but there will always be love in God. Where God in His holiness confronts His image-bearers in their rebellion, there must be wrath, or God is not the jealous God He claims to be, and His holiness is impugned. The price of diluting God's wrath is diminishing God's holiness.
Chance does not speak essentially through words nor can it be seen in their convolution. It is the eruption of language, its sudden appearance. It's not a night twinkle with stars, an illuminated sleep, nor a drowsy vigil. It is the very edge of consciousness.
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well. It were done quickly.
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.
Through tears and trials, through fears and sorrows, through the heartache and loneliness of losing loved ones, there is assurance that life is everlasting. Our Lord and Savior is the living witness that such is so.
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