“Old Enough!” Netflix Show Helped Me Better Understand the Shortest Verse in the Bible
The kids in the show are about this age. I’m amazed at what they do so young, and I little disturbed.
My wife and I recently started to watch a Japanese TV show call “Old Enough!” on Netflix. It is also called “First Errand” in Japan, I think. We started watching the show after I listened to a podcast that was kind-of about the show. The podcast was more about the design differences between Japanese and American cities, but it used this show as a jumping off point. Roads, schools, business and life in general are designed differently to allow the events on this show to happen in Japan yet would be totally unthinkable in America. The TV show is about what we are told is a normal part of life in Japan. Young children, very young children, being sent on their “first errand.” The kids are between the ages of 2 and 5, and have to navigate the city, sometimes up to few miles one way, and perform multiple tasks like shopping, picking something up, or going to the cleaners. Alone. It sounds like this is relatively normal in Japan. The culture and the design of streets and cities are set up in a way to allow children to help with the errands and tasks (among other reasons of course.) Seeing a 2 1/2-year-old walking and shopping on their own is obviously a bit weird for us in the U.S.
The show is a bit over the top sometimes, trying hard to get laughs and fun from the amazingly cute kids. The children go through real life struggles and perform true “hero-journeys” for themselves. We are all secretly watching the children who are way too young to know they are being watched. For them the struggle is real. For us laugh tracks, bubble graphics, “cuteness overload” type shots of the kids, etc. abound to try to make it funny. It feels very cartoonish at times, and reality TV is anything but real. Even so, the struggle is real for the kids.
Even though the show is about the very young and cute children struggling on their journeys, I keep thinking about parents and parenting in general while watching. It’s the child’s parents that capture my attention, even though they are on the screen for a small percentage of time in each episode. These parents are sending their 2 to 4-year-old children out in the world on their own to complete some errand. Of course these parents know this is being done for a TV show and will be filmed and watched. They agreed to this before the crew showed up. The parents know their kids will be physically fine. There are camera people, producers, and crew watching and hiding around the children, and they also know their neighbors and the community will watch out for them as well.
Even with the confidence that all will be safe, you can see in their eyes that this is absolutely killing them. Their child that they love beyond measure may get confused along the way, they may get lost, they may worry, or become scared. The child may panic and cry (which happens often). The parents know they will not be there to pick them up, wipe away the tears and encourage them. It is heartbreaking. You only see this side of the story for a few seconds each episode, but it is there, and it feels very real. I end up needing to hide my own tears from my wife each time because it feels 100% out of place to cry with this overly “happy” and funny show and I’m sure my wife would poke fun at me.
In a strange way this has helped my better understand the Atonement that makes up the core of my faith. I know that may sound far-fetched so let me explain. I’ve always struggled with some small things that I probably think too much about. For example, the touching action pointed out in John 11:35. It says simply, “Jesus wept.” He wept when Martha came out to him after Lazarus had passed away. I mean yes, I understand that they were all very close friends and they loved each other. But Jesus knew the end from the beginning and knew Lazarus would be fine. He had an eternal perspective. I have always been touched with His weeping of course, but also confused by it. Who was he weeping for? Martha? Lazarus? Himself? If God knows all, he knows how this turns out alright. Right? While I feel it emotionally, I have not been able to make sense of it logically.
As I've pondered this (especially after watching this goofy Japanese TV show), I have settled on the fact that God has an infinite level of empathy and love for his children. Christ knows us personally and has felt our pains. He felt the pain of Martha and other family and friends in that moment. In my opinion he was weeping for Martha and what she was going through. She was hurting. She was mourning in a very deep, personal, and overwhelming way. Jesus knew her and the others there had to feel this and go though it as a part of mortal life. Even though he had the power to, he would not remove that feeling. He raised Lazarus for them at that moment, but Lazarus would eventually die, as we all do, and the mourning would return. As humans in this life, we all struggle and feel pain. We are here for just that reason, to experience joy and pain and failure. We are here to work through it and to stay faithful through it all.
I picture our Heavenly Father, or even our Heavenly Parents, along with Christ all knowing how hard somethings are for us to go though. They watch us suffer and struggle, yet they allow us to feel all of it. Even when they know we will be just fine in the end, that does not take away our pain in the moment, or their love for us. We get lost. We feel pain. We feel loneliness. We will feel helpless. We lose loved ones and feel pain we think we won’t get through. Christ offers comfort, but does not take away the pain, or the growth we gain in the process.
God knows our feelings better than we can possibly imagine. Even with the pain He knows we feel at times, He will allow us to experience it in order to grow. The parents of these children on the show do as well. They know in the end their children will be perfectly fine, the producers will not let anything bad happen. Yet knowing the confusion, sadness, and trouble their children will go through on this journey, with no one immediately around them to help, is heartbreaking for a parent. The show may be very fake at times, but that part is always true and real.
