Tuesday, April 25, 2017

One of the Worst Things Your Parents Said

One of the worst things they'll say to you when you're young is that getting older sucks, that adulthood is  not nearly as fun as childhood, that life is at its best when you are young. What a damning pontification. What, then, if the child is currently not enjoying life? You have condemned them to an even worse future. You have trivialized their current suffering. And what does that say to a 10 year old? That the next 70 years of their life, now, are all downhill? A slowly increasing haphazard of suffering and misery?

To a 10 year old who doesn't understand concepts like nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses, it seems true. Why would your parents lie? Why would they be wrong?

For some, they will be right, for others, they won't. To wit, the present author could never go back to junior high, or high school, long ago grown out of the cynical hardening and verbal jousting they required. The present author could never go back to a time when they couldn't choose what and when to eat, what to wear, when to travel. These are all immensely freeing and valuable occurrences.

So if any of you ever have children, all I ask is that, instead of trying to explain to a child how they have it so good, simply work to make it so, and give them reasons to embrace life, at any age.

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