Who Will Today’s Kids Be Twenty Years From Now?
A whole new breed in the making.
My twelve year-old son and I were chatting in the car on the way to school, when he brought up a song that he fondly remembered growing up. The song is called “The Faith Song” which appeared in The Amazing World of Gumball. I would suggest that you listen to it through the link I provided. Succinctly put, it shares all of what is currently wrong with the world then endeavors to inspire why kids should remain positive. Where this song attempts to turn a shit show into one that gives kids hope through a single song, we parents are fighting this fight every day.
We try to ascertain the position of our children, get into their minds and ahead of their thoughts, and turn news about “lockdowns, job losses, civil unrest, teachers who are abandoning them, futures traded for power, ideologies fighting, military failure jeopardizing safety, medical distrust and discourse, science versus faith, and whether or not at the end of the history-making moment that we will be better off for forever or simply today” into a conversation that makes them want to remain in this world. The noise and the silence (both a form of each other) are deafening to these kids, so much so in fact that if our kids don’t somehow manage to live in a bubble, they may not survive this at all and come out in the way we all intended they day each of them were born.
Every parent and grandparent I know is worried about their kids right now. We are all trying to figure out what to say to them to convince them that “we got this” and all will be alright. But kids have the knack of smelling and calling “bullshit” a mile away. And there is no doubt that many of them are calling it now regardless of how avid their parents are at convincing them.
The truth is, we don’t know how all of this will end up? We don’t know the amount of suffering humanity will go through or for how long to ensure that they have a shot at worthwhile days ahead. So how can we truly convince them? We can’t. But in this, is a lesson in itself.
It is a lesson in courage. A lesson in standing up to fear. It is a lesson in managing uncertainty. It is a lesson in moving beyond the discomfort towards something greater. It is a lesson in “rising up” beyond the failure because spirit does not end there.
Like The Faith Song denotes, it is teaching kids to choose to climb to the top of the mountain to see “all the rest” as opposed to planting yourself at the foot of it, numbed to feel nothing, and becoming that very same nothing as a result.
So again, as we are watching history being made, we are experiencing making it ourselves in our own homes as we strive to lead our kids away from the bleakness that they are seeing all around them and into the possibility that awaits them. As we view all of this through children’s eyes, we have no other choice than to meet them where they are at with historic parenting, support among each other, the realization that “the time is now, and maybe a bit more Gumball!”
No doubt, if we do all of this, the new breed in the making will be take the best of us and avoid the same mistakes. We can only hope.
