I know we, as a culture, get a lot of our thinking from television, peers, and what we see around us. Perception is reality in this world. I get that.
I was watching a television show tonight, a law enforcement drama, and in the span of 5 minutes the plot basically showed everything wrong with today’s upcoming adults. Even a procedural police drama is being cast as like an episode of Glee?
A main character, assistant district attorney, makes an embarrassment of himself. Ok fine. Next thing you know he’s three weeks out in the woods trying to come to terms with himself and be his better him I guess. So we’re teaching escapism to avoid reality? Nice.
A teenage daughter in the show can’t deal with changing classes; a perfectly normal school function that happens every semester. She calls Dad to pick her up and they take her out of school and have a “we” day together. Again….teaching that escaping reality solves one’s problems?
An adult teacher’s girlfriend has left him. It happens, ya know. Next thing, he’s reevaluating his life choices, where he lives, what he wants to do with his life. Again… reinforcing escapism as an option.
As an adult of 45 years, I’ve got friends across all the spectrums of age, from about 28-65. I see this play out in reality all the time and it’s not only sad, it’s scary.
I honestly wouldn’t care if “some” of these inept adults just walked themselves into the ocean and never resurfaced. That’s their choice. Fine. More stuff that needs to get done would get done without them clogging up the global economy. But the sheer amount of people that can’t handle being an adult in this country is truly scary.
These adults are managing companies, running for office, and literally think it’s OK to just stop being an adult when things get tough.
Somewhere along the way people got the impression that what they feel matters in the big scheme of things. I’m not in a good mental place today, so I guess I just won’t go to work and my employer will have to figure out how to tell customers his company can’t provide a certain service. Or my team will be a man down when other things depend on us being on schedule. It’s perfectly fine that my coworkers have to carry my load. After all I need a mental health day!
Is anyone ever going to have the heart to let these people know that the world doesn’t care how they feel? The universe doesn’t care. Mother nature doesn’t care. Murphy doesn’t care. Everything that has to happen, still has to happen while someone is busy sitting in their safe space trying to decide how they “feel” about it all.
This is the same group of people that thinks that others should have to pay for their education, free them of all their debt, pay them to have children when they’re not at work. Their entire universe seems, from the viewpoint of a Gen X professional, to be built on a house of cards that has no choice except to come tumbling down. Eventually, when enough of MY type of people stop coming to work and age out, there’s not going to be enough of THEM showing up for work to make a breakfast biscuit, much less run this country.
And I’ve never, and I mean EVER, seen a plan on how they think this plays out. No one has ever explained to me what the goal of this utopian America is except that no one needs to feel guilty for doing what makes them feel good.
What is the result?
In the big scheme of things, it won’t matter in a week. It won’t matter next year very much. But eventually it will matter. Thankfully, I’m far enough along in life that I’ll survive whatever the millenials do next. My family is secure. I’ve been prepping since before I knew what the word meant because I was raised by that older generation that just called that life. Grandma put away food in canning jars against hard times. Families all knew how to share work loads. Everyone knew how to work a garden because those skills and work loads were all something they may have to depend on some day.
As an adult in today’s world, I take that a little more seriously in recent years. I learned how to store food for long term usage. I learn how to buy more cost effectively and store for longer so I can save money. I procure the tools and materials I’d need to survive the economy falling apart. I don’t WANT to ever have to mill my own grain for my wife to make flour for pancakes or bread, but the tools and skills necessary to have the knowledge are simple enough to procure, so I do it.
That’s part of what I’ve decided this new web site and some of my new writing is going to be about. I don’t think anyone today can seriously repair the damaged minds of today’s next generation of leadership, so rather than try to educate them on reality, it’s just easier to be sure me and mine are prepared to survive their catastrophic choices.
Along the way I’m going to find a way to monetize the accumulated knowledge base I’ve got at my disposal. I’ve surrounded myself with friends with amazing and valuable skill sets and there are a lot of people out there that would love to get the knowledge via easier channels. I guess, at the end of the day, the more the world keeps going to hell in a handbasket, the more I’ll be inspired to learn.
Time will tell