A few days back, on the 23rd, I was remembering an incident recounted by a friend. She was replying to someone else's comments on Facebook. Misha, a friend in mundane life as well as in this electronic realm, related the behavior of a teenaged group she meets on a street. The youths disregard prevailing thoughts about the necessity for social distancing, and show in their actions a disrespect for their elders.
This occurs in a political environment in which some people, even some who call themselves "lawmakers," express a willingness to threaten and dispense with the older members of society, in order to let the economy function. An economy that functions on the death of the knowledgeable and experienced is an economy to let founder and die, to my mind. But I suppose that those who profess this willingness are Morlocks, who have no taste for the old, and would rather have the young at hand.
Misha perceived in these youths' actions and attitudes their resentment toward her being older, which makes her symbolically the source of all that is troubling their young minds.
On the 23rd, sitting in a rocking chair even older than I am, I found myself penciling thoughts that I might say to these youth. So I place them here. For who knows? One or two, out of any group of twenty or so resentful youths, might listen. So:
Thoughts for Youth in a Troubling Time
If you listen to your peers, weigh carefully what they say.
Sometimes if you follow the group lead, and then go into error or worse, it feels less bad a thing than when you make a mistake through your own thought, trusting to your own instincts as to what is right to do, or good to do. Yet however soothed you may feel in being able to say that it was someone else's fault that you acted the fool, you feel this way because you have a callous over a callous. For you have wounded yourself doubly.
If you act against what is right and good, that is one self-inflicted wound. If you do so to follow someone's exhortation, or due to group pressure, then you are listening to them, and not to your own inner voice. And that wound — of ignoring yourself — is the most grievous of wounds. People go scarred and lamed through all their lives because of it, and never know. They think that the smile they see in the mirror is a true one. Since no one has hurt them but themselves, they think themselves unhurt.
If you say to us who are older that you deserve your folly, because you are only young once and must have your day, then give an ear to what those who are older can tell you. Youth is the making of mistakes. We find our way through life by wrong turns. If we recognize them as such, we go on to be older in years, and perhaps wiser. Otherwise we go on to be older in years, but with our committed foolishness compounded with illusion.
Most of us mix the two approaches.
Besides this, I say that you need not fret yourself over being young only once. If you heed your inner voice, and view life as a process of continually making yourself anew, you will find yourself able to make mistake after mistake after mistake, no matter your years, few or many. For you never cease finding your way. And if you live in this manner to your dying day then your "being young only once" has lasted all your life.
We are young forever, so long as we make only our own mistakes, and steer clear of the mistakes that others would have us make. Though not easy — nothing about youth is easy — this is what life offers to you. It offers it to you, as an individual, alone.
Cheers . . .
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