Tests Challenge Us

All human development occurs in the dialectical movement between an expanding vision of reality and the challenges that accompany this enlarged frame of reference. They accompany each other as surely as tests accompany classroom studies. A few instances: when a child conquers the challenges of speech, walking, the first grade, adolescence, entering the workplace, marriage. Each challenge conquered expands the borders of our vision; the broader field of vision presents new challenges.

Sooner or later the time comes when we decide that we have reached a satisfactory state of development. We close our borders and back off from significant further challenge. We have attained successful maturity or we are painfully conscious that we are unlikely ever to succeed. We live with a feeling either of adequacy or inadequacy. For the majority, this occurs by the time we are forty-five. By that age, most have already either begun to climb the ladder of success or given up hope and settled into what Thoreau called, “lives of quiet desperation.” For the former, their field of vision is working, and since it “ain’t broke,” they see no need to fix it, expand or extend it. The latter already have faced and lost too many challenges. They want no more tests of their ability. Persistent failure is painful.

All tests challenge us; all challenges test us. Personal maturity comes as we move toward a worldview without borders and as we accept the most threatening challenges to human well-being. This also serves as a measure of the health of a society. The American people need the leadership that will expand the borders of our national vision and accept the challenges that most threaten the well-being of that larger, world-wide vision. Whether we are alert to it or not, in this election year we are being challenged to accept the larger vision and its more subtle challenges.