I think that one of the greatest things we can teach our children is not to force things. When I look at my generation and I see where we are now, I see that we made a whole lot of decisions based on the fact that we thought that's what we were supposed to do. We thought that we were supposed to settle down, get married and have kids at a certain age. We thought that we HAD to decide on a career at 18 when we started college. We thought that we had to buy a house near our parents. We thought that we had to have holiday meals with our family and never move outside of our little tribal circle.
Then, I look at my generation now. At least half, if not more, of us are divorced. Some remarried, some haven't really dated, and some are not interested in ever getting married again after our experiences. At least half aren't even using a degree that they obtained right out of high school. Some just got a different job, some are pursuing something currently, and some aren't even sure what they're supposed to do. At least half of us don't have that house near our parents. In fact, statistically a lot of people lost or sold them in their divorce or in the mortgage crisis while others had to move due to jobs and others moved voluntarily for a better life. You see, we tried to force a life that we weren't ready to have and ended up realizing that we should have taken those years to really think on who we were.
I am a firm believer in encouraging (not forcing but encouraging) kids to really wait until they're at least 24 or 25 to get married and settle down. I did it much earlier, as did many of my friends, and I have learned so much from it. I don't think that a whole lot of people truly know what they want to do at 18. I don't think many of them realize that they haven't even unwrapped all of the layers of who they are and your late teens are twenties are the best time to find that out! I think that kids benefit more from not having these hard expectations on what exactly they have to do. It doesn't have to be a cookie cutter business to be successful. True happiness and success come from doing what you're meant to do, not what you have been forced into doing.
What has changed the way our country works is that we seem to have developed a "me" complex. We forget that part of our responsibility, as a nation, is to mentor the upcoming generation on what we've learned. Will they always listen? No, in fact, they may not seem like they're listening at all....until they encounter a situation where they need to use the advice and realize that you weren't trying to boss them around; you were trying to help them. Part of our responsibility as a nation is to encourage them to change the world. It's important for us to encourage them to shoot for the starts because great advances come from people who think outside the box. Shouldn't their parents be taking care of that? Of course they should but what harm does it do to reinforce that teaching? Why have we gone from "it takes a village" to "screw the village, I'm saving my house?" It may not be your "job" to mentor these kids but a great man once said, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country."
I've sort of gotten off track. My apologies.
My point in all of this is that if we want to raise a better generation, we need to encourage them to be what they were meant to be. Maybe it's not what we pictured or what would make the most money but it's what will fill their soul. If we want to help the current generation, we need to be there to mentor them, even if when it's not fun. You see, when they find what their soul needs to fill it, they, too, will want to do something wonderful to change the nation. Big changes can begin with just one small step.
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