Old folks are bad about predicting gloom and doom, and I am among the most notorious. Even considering only the recent past, I have:
Told a young man who had just charged $2000 worth of stereo equipment on his new credit card that instead of maxxing it out by adding the cost of big screen TV to his balance, he should return the sound equipment and buy a portable stereo for $129. That, I said, would be easier to pay off quickly with the earnings from his part time job. If you buy the TV and max out your card, I told him, you will not be able to make the minimum payments. That will hurt your chances of getting a full time job when they check your credit, and if you should get a full time job and want to buy a house, your bad credit will cost you thousands of dollars in higher interest rates.
Advised a young woman that her current boyfriend was not good husband material, that his drinking and anger management problems would not be cured by marriage, even by having children, that he would not stop hitting her, and eventually, he would hit the kids.
Warned a young teenager that if he did not study, and persisted in cutting his classes to play video games, he would not be able to score high enough on his SATS or make the grades to get into the universities he was interested in, and if he really wanted in a career as a developer of video games, he should make it his business to learn what the term “programming language” means, a detail he did not feel was relevant.
And as is generally the case with old folks who offer unsolicited advice, the lucky recipients viewed my opinion as negative, defeatist, fatalistic and unecessarily pessimistic.
In their way, they were right. I can see their point of view. It is possible that the young media enthusiast could win the lottery, in which case he could not only pay off his credit card, but buy lots more TVs and stereos, one for every room. Or he might land a full time job before he misses that first payment on his card, and if the job pays enough, he might never miss one at all. He is not risk averse and believes that sometimes you just have to go with the gusto and take that shot.
The young woman believes she is in love, and there is nothing that anyone can tell her that will convince her otherwise. Sadly, she did not have the benefit of growing up in a home with parents who loved each other, thus one of the simplest but most elusive lessons, namely that true love is supposed to make you happy, not sad and afraid, will come harder to her. In her reality, what she feels for her troubled suitor is love. She cannot conceive of a life without him, and she knows with unshakable certainty that her love can change him. He does not need treatment for alcoholism, he does not need counseling, all he needs is her, and once she proves her devotion by marrying him, he will stop drinking, and once she gives him a child, his anger issues and violent tendencies will evaporate like snowflakes on a warm kitchen window. There is no question that love can work miracles, and none of us can know what is in another’s heart. Just because I cannot recall any other instance of what appears to be in her heart working this particular miracle does not mean it is impossible. The odds might even be as good as winning the lottery.
An old geezer like me, the teen will tell you, has no idea what I am talking about. I don’t even know the names of video games, much less play them, I am utterly ignorant of the skills involved, of the creativity required, that special something that makes the difference between just another game and a real blockbuster. That’s why I can’t recognize his talent or understand that with the kind of genius he possesses for this stuff, he doesn’t need to know what a programming language is, or conjugate verbs. Once he tells the game companies his ideas, they will be begging him to please come work for them, and not their competition. I have to concede he makes a lot of good points. I don’t know the first thing about video games, and I have a great respect for genius. Maybe someone at – see, I don’t even know the names of the biggest video game companies, to drive his point home, but maybe someone from there will have that same respect for the young man’s genius and hire him on the spot when he hears those ideas about monsters and racing cars and death rays, and all my blather about programming languages and writing complete sentences is just punchbowl piss.
What is it about the passage of the years that makes us so inclined to splatter gloom and doom all over the place?
When you’re young (substitute inexperienced, if you like) you feel as though you can conquer the world. No challenge is too great.
As a relative youngin’, I’m still coming to grips with the idea that maybe I’m not as immortal or influential as I once thought.
Learning that is something that has only happened because of the struggles and trials I’ve been through. And I have persevered, if not thrived, through those times, and while I may not have done it all ‘right’, I’m better and smarter for it now.
Undoubtedly, you feel that you should try to save these younger folks from mistakes that you’ve made, or seen.
But we all have to learn our own way. And sometimes the way one of us learns something isn’t the same way that someone else would teach it.
I think we see reality, and what we see in younger persons is not the same reality, and we want to protect them from the mistakes that our cohort (or we ourselves) have made.
It isn’t likely to work.
Piaget talked about teens having a form of egocentrism – not selfishness, really, but self-consciousness. They have a sense of being in front of an audience all of the time.Piaget called this the “imaginary audience”, because adults see it as imaginary, but for a kid it is very real. You are ‘on’. And what you expect is your ‘personal fable’ – that you have unique and special destiny. That’s why the kid thinks he’s going to be a whiz kid of video game design. Or the young woman will magically save the angry drunk and turn him into the great American novelist. . We know reality is far, far grimmer. And far different in what brings joy, too. Not in things, or money, or vicarious glory.
But the other thing, well proven about teens, is that the listen to old codgers more than we know, especially people who are in their families and parents’ friends, etc. If I could suggest anything to you, it is to listen a bit more to those kids – it appears that you are doing that, however. You seem to know what their plans and dreams are. We plant seeds that we will not see grow up, but they are there.
DF, I got an e-mail last year from a student I taught some 25 years ago as an utter greenhorn teacher. He was 9 years old, brilliant, brightest child I ever taught. Parents all but ignored him. I spent a lot of time managing that kid in class, he was such a horrendous and thrilling challenge.
I left teaching, went to grad school, had no contact with him. He went on to Jr. High, and then dropped out. Lots of bad stuff ensued. But he found me, just as his first kid was about to be born. He’s finishing a M.A. now, and he’s not a money-grubber, not an egocentric S.O.B. as I once feared, but a great guy, good dad, and working passionately for abused kids. He & I have stayed in touch, and for me it is better than winning the lottery, I can tell you. I never expected to have one second of influence on his life past the time he walked out of my classroom for the last time.
You may be doing much more than you think. Just not as quickly as you wish
Not to mention that you are doing good by raising a few hackles around here and making us think, whether or not we agree with you. I for one, need some of my hackles raised from time to time. (My husband agrees strongly, but he’ll never know I admitted that!)
I do wish for you a little more joy, however. It is there, even in these days. And I cannot see your name without smiling.
Why would we expect more from a young adult than we do from a voter?
Both have been coddled, led their lives in a special existence where nothing outside their own comfort is “real”, and have either been given such a great sense of self-importance by the supposedly responsible adults around them or ‘created’ their own reality and ‘built’ their own lives, ignorant of all the help and breaks they received that others never got.
The problems of others aren’t their problems. What is in front of their face IS, that which is not IS NOT. The greater reality pales compared to the personal reality.
The big questions of life are something they’ll get to later, they tell themselves. Until then its ‘someone elses job’. If something needs to be done, it will be done, just as it always has been in their lives. Otherwise, its just not possible.
The difference is sometimes a young adult will do something none of us could have predicted. Who would have guessed that helping others rip off music could lead to careers in real business? That you could get rich by producing nothing of value with the efforts of a handful of your friends? To some degree, the progress of our nation relies on people doing what everyone else tells them just can’t be done.
So, I cut the young people some slack. The kid buying stereo equipment can always sell the items at a loss, get a loan from his parents, find a way. Maybe his streak of luck will hold up, and he’ll never know how narrowly he avoided an entire future of economic misery for his short term gain. The woman is most likely doomed to misery — however brief she makes it. Maybe her children will escape? And the cocky game player may not get his dream, but he’ll get something else, and continue to play games all the same.
I wish I had the same optimism for the voter. They’re the ones who buy the BS that a strong GDP is more important than a strong American People. They’re the ones who don’t think the govt should help anyone poorer than themselves, because no one is helping them. They’re the ones who will mortgage their children’s future simply because they’ll never have to bear the costs.
The young make mistakes. But they’re young. That’s been the case since junior tried to take on the beast solo with his trusty spear.
What’s the voter’s excuse?
I forgot to add the happy/productive ending there 😉
Voters want to be told how smart they are. If you tell them two things they already believe, and one thing you want them to believe, they’ll honestly consider the third thing (if they aren’t already opposed to it).
Young adults are worse. When they ask for advice, or talk about their difficulties, they’re looking for approval, or perhaps new ideas. If they want to be told what to do, it will be obvious. Even in that incredibly rare case, they’ll still want approval for looking for advice, and odds are they’re looking for you to choose from a number of options they’ve already considered but haven’t told you.
Good teachers have a knack for this. Bad ones and many of the rest of us get so hung up on the right answer (leave the abusive boyfriend) that we forget why the question came up and what the feelings are of the people involved (why is she so lonely? Why doesn’t she think she could replace him? What traits does she need that she’s projecting onto him? Is there a way to encourage her to try another relationship, without criticizing/wounding her for choosing this one?).
Maybe we’d do better in politics if we looked at the voters the same way.
My favorite adage:
In other words, at some point through our advancing years most of us have, “been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt.”
I got some sound advice when I was young, by people who had taken a journey or two that they wouldn’t wish on another (thank you, so very, very much), but mostly I made my own mistakes – just like everyone else.
Still, it worth saying that maybe, just maybe, jumping off a building is not the best way to get a firm grasp on the theory of gravity. Of course, that didn’t stop me. :O
My version of your adage: An expert is merely someone who has made plenty of mistakes and learned from them.
I was told to marry my best friend by some incredibly serene and hopeful Holocaust survivors. They showed me the tatoos and heck I’m not even Jewish.
My depression era parents–the first college grads in their families–advised me to pursue the goofiest obscure passion I could dream up, as a career. They had no idea of my talent for ferreting out what’s really obscure.
My 2nd generation Ukranian stepfather told me to go work for the government. They’ll never go broke, he said. Invest in treasury bonds. Stocks are for rich gamblers who can afford to lose.
My WW1 –yes, that’s World War 1– British band leader said it’d never been so easy to get instruments and music and top notch teaching.
Of course, like today’s elders, they thought our young generation were squandering untold opportunity. But they all insisted that the future, if we could avoid that tricky nuclear annihiliation bit, was unimaginably rosy.
The first doom and gloom elders I’ve met are the ones we have become.
But maybe it’s just the crowd I hang out with.