Roles, Vistas and Children

I've met some parents of millennials and GenZ who find it hard to provide guardrails and guidance in a world of rapidly changing expectations of self-governance, independence and freedom.

It's a hard problem, and I find taking a step or three back can help see the story with a wider lens.

In the beginnings of our lives, the world is new and everything is to be experienced and experiencing makes us happy.

There's little thought in our heads about anything truly important, because when we're young (e.g. under 20) we're trying to decide what we believe in, how we really look at the world, and in balancing what we hear from everyone on all sides.

Over time (e.g. 20-30), we've met some people, and even met a few people "again" after a gap of some years. People change in front of our eyes, and some even for the better. Life is less about finding ourselves and more about being ourselves.

Further along (e.g. 30-40), being only in our own head is a real luxury. If we have children it's time to get out of our heads and think for other people (e.g. Child, spouse, etc.). Everything is starting to be a team sport at this point: Not as much "me" as "we".  Each of us is a guide and coach, helping our fledgeling team find its footing. Co-parenting a child with a spouse teaches us to be aware of and learn to care for others (our spouse is a different person, with a second head, a second brain, and have ideas that aren't like ours but must be resolved together).

This trend continues as we get older (e.g. past 40), and our own little "team" starts to be too small! If we have children they might be growing up, and forming their own friendships and deeper relationships. Time to have inter-team get-togethers, expanding our "we" beyond those here and now. Co-parenting with another family is an exponentially more complex activity (another pair of parents, a second pair of brains, many more family relationships to accommodate).

It's way harder to face these challenges than we believe. There's a lot of "this must be easy" at the start of things and finding out "oh shit it's harder than I thought" as we get into it.

The ages mentioned above are just examples: your life moves at your pace and IT IS MOVING AT THE RIGHT PACE.

Regardless of when you face each situation, I assure you - YOU CAN be ready to rise to the challenge.

We budget time to learn (by default) how to pay for our needs - learning to become emoloyees and entrepreneurs, doctors and engineers.

Too often, too many of us do not budget time and mental energy to invest in developing these other skills in interacting and growing with people around us, investing in shared memories and collaborative skills. Absent this critical skillset, our old age can be lonely, disheartening and full of feelings of the world having passed us by.

After all the efforts in other areas of life, we all deserve the social benefits that would last until the end of our lives.

We'll all be dead soon enough as it is - until then, let's Love enthusastically and without restraint!

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To know what is Wrong

The lesson of history is that we as a Human species can talk ourselves into absolutely anything if there’s a will behind that vision.

When Genghis Khan conquered the world at the tip of the sword, he glorified conquest and expansion of his borders, tending to glaze over the necessary maiming, murder and rape of entire towns and countries in this effort.

When Hitler uprooted and marched entire townloads of Jewish people in Europe over to concentration camps, he glorified national pride, a cleaning of the race, and overall good things for the German people, tending to glaze over the children and families he’s slaughtering in cold blood and using the same German people who would thereafter be scarred for life.

When Al-Qaeda attacked the US at home and abroad with persistent terrorist activities, they did so claiming to overcome a sense of US might and suffocating presence in their own homes, tending to glaze over their own murder, mayhem and systematic destabilization of the economy of the people they claimed to champion.

When Hamas attacked Israel in desperate and brutal assaults, they did so claiming to have no other way to resist Israeli expansion into what little remains of historical Palestine, tending to glaze over any culpability for the inevitable and aggressive response from Israel that would soon follow.

When Israel retalitated against Hamas, they did so claiming vengeance for attrocities done against them, glazing over both the slow colonization they are perpetrating on one half of the country of historical Palestine, as well as the actual bombardment of women and children in Gaza.

So what are we to do? If we happen to live in Nazi Germany in a rural village, or happen to be in the vanguard of Genghis Khan’s armies, or live in beautiful Israel where things do not feel so immediately bad: how are we to know if our leaders speak with knowledge of right or just conviction that they are good people?

The trick, in reality, is to mute the speaker, and watch the film in silence. Some of these folks with good and righteous claims have the blood of many innocents on their hands, and much of what they claim to be achieving isn’t actually being achieved.

While it is exceptionally hard to know what is right in any given time and place in our lives, what is WRONG is remarkably easy to tell apart. The blood of the innocent, the bystander, the “one-with-whom-you-could-have-spoken-to-before-harming” - that ever stains the hands of those who are in the WRONG. For we are not any of us long for this world, and our actions directly stains the story of our lives: even the most heinous of the acts of our enemies does not give us carte-blanche to leave our morals at the door.