FP's rites of passage

Coming of age -the age or occasion when one formally becomes an adult.

Japan lowered the age of adulthood in 2018 from 20 years of age to 18 which is set to take effect in 2022.

If you search "coming of age" on youtube, you see a coming of age ceremony where 20 years old wearing Japanese tradiational kimono and taking some pictures with thier friends and listening to some officials at the city hall. That seems very standard coming of age ceremony in Japan. Your kid will be legally adult when they become 18 years old.

Is your kid planning to have a coming of age ceremony at 18? or 19? or 20? Depends on where you live, the city is already preparing a ceremony just targetting at 20 years old. For example, "Comimng of age ceremony for 20 years old." Is your kid ready to b

in 2022,

When a person became 18 years old,

They are legally allowed to do following

- Have a contract with phone company, credit canpany without parent's consent.

- Rent an apartment

- Aquire accounting, Legal assistant, medical license

- Get a loan wihtout parent's concent

- Get a 10 year passport

However, drinking and gambling age did not change. it is 20 years old.

Q. Is 18 years old ready to be legally adult?

Q. What does it mean legally adult?

Q. Is being an adult and legally adult same?

Q. What does it mean to be an adult?

However, are we the one who needs to be thiking about this and to be ready?

Q. How are you going to treat your legally adult sons and daughter?

Q. How do you treat them differently?

Q. What are they going to be needed when they became 18 years old?

Q. Are you going to be done with rasing kids when they became 18 years old?

「Rite of passge」

In jewish community, when a Jewish boy is 13 years old, he becomes accountable for his actions and becomes a bar mitzvah. A girl becomes a bat mitzvah at the age of 12. Before the child reaches bar mitzvah age, parents hold the responsibility for their child's actions. After this age, the boys and girls bear their own responsibility for Jewish ritual law, tradition, and ethics, and are able to participate in all areas of Jewish community life.

Rites of Passage in The Apache

If you see the youtube clips, you maybe surprised how young they are. They prepared for their rites of passage and go trough rites of passge in their community. After that, in their community, they are no longer boys and girls, they are more treated as young adult.

For example, they will be in young adult group in the community to contrinute to their community, not kid's group.

Through traditional rites of passage, we can help kids to become an adult and help them to transition into adulthood physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Recently, we came across more artilcles talking about "Rites of passage"

"How to help young people transition into Adulthood - Modern “rites of passage” can help teens prepare for an uncertain future. "

With so much rapid-fire change in the world, the job of preparing our young people for the future has become increasingly daunting. The Institute of the Future issued a reportin 2017 that declared that 85 percent of the jobs in 2030—when today’s second-graders will graduate high school—have not been invented yet. On top of that, we’re facing an unfolding crisis in the environment; rampant racial, ethnic, and gender inequities; the impending confluence of bioengineering and artificial intelligence; and escalating craziness on the geopolitical stage.

Over the past decade, I talked to thousands of educators grappling with the question of how to best prepare young people for the uncertain future. The vast majority agree that skills like critical thinking, resilience, creativity, systems thinking, and empathy are crucial and must be prioritized over compliance and standardized test scores. But, more recently, there’s a sense that young people need to gain real-world experience in navigating the unknown through some kind of authentic rite of passage—and more and more research is exploring what that might look like.

For millennia, elders have led youth through scaffolded rites of passage. French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep analyzed rites of passage across cultures in history and found that they have a universal three-part structure—separation, liminality, and reincorporation—to help people make sense of great transition. A young person undergoing a coming-of-age rite of passage must leave her “normal world” (separation) and enter into a situation where she experiences the free-fall of being no longer a child but not yet an adult (liminality). Once the initiate has successfully mastered the liminal phase, she returns to the normal world as an adult (reincorporation), having “leveled up” with skills that are needed to function as a healthy member of the community.

But meaningful rites of passage are not as common today. In fact, 75 percent of people between the ages of 12 and 25 lack a clear sense of purpose and many young adults are intimidated by “adulting.” This led me to wonder: How might we combine what we know from psychology and education research with traditional rite-of-passage rituals to help youth practice dwelling in the unknown, while building up critical skills for the future?

I agree with some parts of what the author says.

For example,

"lack a clear sense of purpose" we believe that they lack a clear sense of who they are and who they can become.

Also, they lack of being accountable for their actions and inactions.

Kids are raising with esponsibilities. They have some responsilibites at home and school.

To cotrinute to the class or family. Maybe doing some chores and helping out at school. They have roles.

When we talk about responsibility, there are two kinds.

Responsibility and Accountability

Have responsibility - something that it is your job or duty to deal with:

Holding oneself accountable - Facing the consequences of one's own actions and inaction.

Kids need to have these transition as well into adulthood through real life experience.

Be accountable for your actions and inactions you took

If kids goes to high school, college and maybe graduate school, how much they experience in their real life to held accountbale. They finally start to work when they are done with school at 24 years old.

We can held them to have high standard and reach their full potential while they hold acccountable for their actions much earlier if they grow in the community.

Also, some people come up with "contemprary version of rites of passage"

Most of them are lists of things they need to do without parents support. Like taking a train on their own or cook a meal. Also, kids can have some long term project and work with people who are not family member. What's common in "contemprary version of rites of passage" people are coming up with that kids need to do and achive challenges witout parents support. I think those are great however those are not "rites of passage" those are "imitating" rites of passage.

So, I thought about it why those contemorary rites of passage seems just "imitating" rites of passage. It is because they lack of essence. yes, community. many "contemporary rites pf passage" challenges the kids but kids don't have a community where all the members celebrate.

3 stages of rites of passage

According to Arnold van Gennep, rites of passage have three phases: Separation, liminality, and incorporation. In the first phase, people withdraw from the group and begin moving from one place or status to another. In the third phase, they reenter society, having completed the rite. The liminal phase is the period between states, during which people have left one place or state but have not yet entered or joined the next. During the liminal state one's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, as it is a period of transition.

We have amazing community Feelosopher's Path.

We have as young as 5 years old participating and over 50 years old still work in progress and grow. Everyone in the community lead by the exmple and face each other and make positive connections. Our FP's rites of passage will be so powerful, magical and meaningful to the FP kids.

Q. Who can go through rites of passage?

Q. What age they can go through?

Q. Fee？

A. This is not FP program, this is a communiy cerebration. So it will be no fee but kids need to come up with the money to spend on their rites of passage. So, please discuss and come up with ideas how they can earn money for FP's rites of passage

Q. what are the parent's roles?

A. No gurantee of completion. At FP's rites of passage, parents give hands at the end of ceremony doing high fiving with your newly become young adult. If you give a hand to kids who are going through thie FP's rites of passage, It will not be their succees or even a failure. They need to tell the commynity "With my parental support...." which is not our intentions. You can nnot hold their hands. They are not kids who are crossing the streets. They are ready to become young adult who is going through rites of passage. Only hands they can ask for reach are community members. Yes, they can ask for a help with FP community members.

FP's rites of passage starts with lighting circle of friends with oath and ending with circle of friends.

「Feelosopher’s adventure book」

①　Magic candles

②　7 feelosophers foods

③ Solo camping& climbing

④　3 different community contribution

⑤ Magic shop going across mountains

⑥ Collecting Wisdoms

⑦　Challenge reflect family values

⑧ Celebration inviting FP commynity for your celebration

FP Rite of Passage is not something parents are pushing kids to do. This is for only who commit to go through FP's rites of passage.

✴︎ We will not hold FP Rite of Passage every year.