Sunday Musings

Children have a willingness to be excited that most adults seem to lose as time passes. This I suppose is too bad but I think it is also a change that helps to ground us a bit in the realities of life.

I listen to young people go on about some terrible predicament they are facing, or the difficulties of not fitting in or standing out in the wrong way. Kids…what are you going to do with them?

But I have to accept it is harder to be a kid now. Some things have not changed. There are still mean kids, and peer pressure to get into various kinds of trouble. But the world for all its wonders is a more dangerous place than it used to be.

That said, most of the things we hear the kids say sound kind of silly, but we are listening and hearing through the jaded eyes and ears of adulthood. We have the benefit of hard-won experience, having already learned that not fitting in may be uncomfortable but is not world-ending and in fact it is kind of nice to stand out from the crowd.

They haven’t figured out that bullies are just cowards, but we need to remember that bullies are more dangerous than they used to be. I didn’t want to get beat up, but the possibility of a bully killing me was fairly remote.

Kids have this need to be part of the cool crowd, or whatever that is called these days while not understanding that the only reason the group is favored at all is because they have figured out some formula for gaining unwitting admiration of others who are less comfortable with their own station in life, whatever that might be.

If the respected reader disagrees, then explain Paris Hilton to me, or any of the other socialites, male female and whatever falls in between.

Life has its ups and downs, neither usually fabulous nor tragic. And frequently the bad stuff that happes is what helps us grow and mature, and ultimately find the successes that seem to constantly elude the “lucky” people who have everything handed to them.

But kids haven’t learned this yet so we should cut them some slack.

Have a good week.