Rethinking Mastering the Tides

Remember, your actions—no matter how affirming and strong—will not end the trials and tribulations that the adolescents in our lives must endure, but they will go a long way toward helping them establish a healthy identity and sense of self-worth. As Gandalf, the wise wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, so eloquently said:

Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.