This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/25/break-out-rumspringa-amish-tradition

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Break out and take a rumspringa Adults need gap years too – break out and take a rumspringa
(about 17 hours later)
On holiday in America last month, up late with jetlag, I watched a reality telly programme about Amish teenagers going off into the big, bad world to taste the forbidden fruits of western society. These young adults were on their rumspringa, a word that literally means "running around" and was presented by the show as something like a gap year. Permitted by Amish elders, the rumspringa is an experimental period of adolescence during which the Amish young – well, more the young men – are allowed to escape the confines of their closed community and mess about for a bit, before returning to a life of ascetism. If they return. The thing is, after watching this programme, even I wanted the Amish life I've never actually known – truly, it is a genius idea to make our idea of freedom look about as attractive as headlice.On holiday in America last month, up late with jetlag, I watched a reality telly programme about Amish teenagers going off into the big, bad world to taste the forbidden fruits of western society. These young adults were on their rumspringa, a word that literally means "running around" and was presented by the show as something like a gap year. Permitted by Amish elders, the rumspringa is an experimental period of adolescence during which the Amish young – well, more the young men – are allowed to escape the confines of their closed community and mess about for a bit, before returning to a life of ascetism. If they return. The thing is, after watching this programme, even I wanted the Amish life I've never actually known – truly, it is a genius idea to make our idea of freedom look about as attractive as headlice.
There was the strange pink booze that made the kids vomit on each other, nightclubs where everyone was a dead-eyed walking selfie, accommodation in "luxury LA apartments" apparently fashioned from plastic glass and glue. All the shouting. Road rage. And so it became immediately clear why the Amish faith is still going strong after hundreds of years. I mean, working out how to get wazzed off your cops on neon-coloured vodka, have oral sex in a wheelie-bin and make all your friends hate you is hard enough if you've grown up in a country where national newspapers give out Shagger of the Year awards. (This country.) If you've grown up in an ascetic prairie where your community decides on the appropriate width of your hat brim – personally, I'd have been relieved to go home and marry my second cousin after all that. Which is why I became convinced that we all need to adopt the rumspringa immediately. Indeed, I grow increasingly certain, as the weeks pass, that it is the rumspringa, more than anything else, that will keep western families and communities alive.There was the strange pink booze that made the kids vomit on each other, nightclubs where everyone was a dead-eyed walking selfie, accommodation in "luxury LA apartments" apparently fashioned from plastic glass and glue. All the shouting. Road rage. And so it became immediately clear why the Amish faith is still going strong after hundreds of years. I mean, working out how to get wazzed off your cops on neon-coloured vodka, have oral sex in a wheelie-bin and make all your friends hate you is hard enough if you've grown up in a country where national newspapers give out Shagger of the Year awards. (This country.) If you've grown up in an ascetic prairie where your community decides on the appropriate width of your hat brim – personally, I'd have been relieved to go home and marry my second cousin after all that. Which is why I became convinced that we all need to adopt the rumspringa immediately. Indeed, I grow increasingly certain, as the weeks pass, that it is the rumspringa, more than anything else, that will keep western families and communities alive.
Think about it – how many people do you know who broke up their family, their marriage of several decades, or messed up their job, just because they really wanted to have an idiotic affair? Actually longed to stop being sensible and make idiot love? For a while? We all long for a holiday from our lives. To run around and do stupid stuff that we know will mess everything up, give the lie to the ring on the finger that says we are one thing when we long to be another, or long not to be anything at all. Call it a midlife crisis or a seven-year-itch if you like. The desire to stop being all of the labels – mother, wife, teaching assistant, next-door neighbour, charity volunteer – and replace all of them, just for the burning moment of now, with one single word: numpty.Think about it – how many people do you know who broke up their family, their marriage of several decades, or messed up their job, just because they really wanted to have an idiotic affair? Actually longed to stop being sensible and make idiot love? For a while? We all long for a holiday from our lives. To run around and do stupid stuff that we know will mess everything up, give the lie to the ring on the finger that says we are one thing when we long to be another, or long not to be anything at all. Call it a midlife crisis or a seven-year-itch if you like. The desire to stop being all of the labels – mother, wife, teaching assistant, next-door neighbour, charity volunteer – and replace all of them, just for the burning moment of now, with one single word: numpty.
What if we allowed everybody a rumspringa every now and then, understanding that their surface tension is increasing as the years of responsibility go by, and that only a quick dip in that numpty pool can maintain the status quo?What if we allowed everybody a rumspringa every now and then, understanding that their surface tension is increasing as the years of responsibility go by, and that only a quick dip in that numpty pool can maintain the status quo?
Don't be confused – this is nothing to do with that thing they call "me time". As far as I can see from lifestyle magazine articles, me time is when you pay £100 to spend a day sitting in a Jacuzzi, trying to form a meaningful relationship with a soap-on-a-rope. The sort of time that I am talking about – and I can only apologise again to the Amish for taking their concept and bastardising it so unforgivably – is more when you run off an emotional cliff and explode into a bright, burning dickhead star. Only to realise, after you've done it, that your old life wasn't so bad after all. And the good news  is – it is still there if you want to return. Just this once.Don't be confused – this is nothing to do with that thing they call "me time". As far as I can see from lifestyle magazine articles, me time is when you pay £100 to spend a day sitting in a Jacuzzi, trying to form a meaningful relationship with a soap-on-a-rope. The sort of time that I am talking about – and I can only apologise again to the Amish for taking their concept and bastardising it so unforgivably – is more when you run off an emotional cliff and explode into a bright, burning dickhead star. Only to realise, after you've done it, that your old life wasn't so bad after all. And the good news  is – it is still there if you want to return. Just this once.
Obviously you can't keep doing this stuff forever. You can't keep cheating on your partner and expect to be taken back indefinitely – which is why the rumspringa works so well, at least in my head. Its boundaries gives you a taste of the bad apple but let you back in the garden of Eden afterwards. (It should be stressed that in some Amish communities, the word only alludes to adolescent freedoms as innocent as visiting a bowling alley or using a DVD player.) You can come back to your boring life with a sigh and admit that the other side of the grass wasn't greener after all. Obviously you can't keep doing this stuff for ever. You can't keep cheating on your partner and expect to be taken back indefinitely – which is why the rumspringa works so well, at least in my head. Its boundaries gives you a taste of the bad apple but let you back in the garden of Eden afterwards. (It should be stressed that in some Amish communities, the word only alludes to adolescent freedoms as innocent as visiting a bowling alley or using a DVD player.) You can come back to your boring life with a sigh and admit that the other side of the grass wasn't greener after all.
Anyway, I have started with my daughter, who is two-and-and-a-half and needs to go on a rumspringa about every third hour. (I have now decided that our western rumspringas can spread further apart the older you get – so a toddler gets one every third hour, a 40-year-old can have one, say, every seventh year.) After doing the boring things that a grown-up makes her do – putting her shoes on the right feet, finishing her breakfast, sitting sensibly on a bus – she is then allowed to go nuts. 'Rumspringa!' I shout, and off she goes on the grass, running around like a dazed sheepdog, feeling the electric joy of being alive as it races through to her fingertips. She sleeps better, so I sleep better, and we all feel more alive. Anyway, I have started with my daughter, who is two-and-and-a-half and needs to go on a rumspringa about every third hour. (I have now decided that our western rumspringas can spread further apart the older you get – so a toddler gets one every third hour, a 40-year-old can have one, say, every seventh year.) After doing the boring things that a grown-up makes her do – putting her shoes on the right feet, finishing her breakfast, sitting sensibly on a bus – she is then allowed to go nuts. "Rumspringa!" I shout, and off she goes on the grass, running around like a dazed sheepdog, feeling the electric joy of being alive as it races through to her fingertips. She sleeps better, so I sleep better, and we all feel more alive.
Rumspringas for all, I say.Rumspringas for all, I say.