Hey everyone it's Jake with another post. This has been on my mind for a while and I just thought I would write it down and share it with others. I hope it makes you think about your own experiences as well.
When does it happen? Every single person has or will experience it
at some point. When is the exact moment that a child transforms into an adult?
Is it the first day of high school? Is it a first car or first kiss? When does
the process begin to start and churn inside an adolescents mind? It is a moment that will be remembered
forever, but all too often it tries to be obtained too quickly. The society
that I find myself growing up in is different than all others that have come
before. It is a place that, if you are not careful, can swallow you in your own
selfishness and desires. It’s a place that can turn worlds upside down and
distorts the comforting image of life that we have all grown to accept. But
above it all, this society takes in the innocence of a child and spits out a
hard callused adult who has grown accustomed to the bitterness the world so
willingly offers. It leaves us blind to the reality that life is so precious
and beautiful. But the question is…where does it begin? And why does it start
in the first place?
Think of the most scraggily, beat
up, filth ridden person you have ever seen. The deception is that this person
has been like this his or her entire life and deserves the life that they have
earned. It’s not too often that we think about this person as a new born baby,
or a toddler taking their first steps. It’s not too often that we think about
the new life in their fresh expressions as we smell the alcohol on their
breath. I mean think about it, no one is born addicted to drugs or alcohol. No
one is born without any ambitions or hope. No one is born a victim. We are all born innocent, and have not been
tampered with in any way. As we grow older, life throws us the first tastes of
what it has in store for us. The little boy without his front teeth could have
his parents separate or the little girl with the pigtails could be abused. We don’t
understand it as children, but we are so curious as to why these things happen
for no reason. It makes us wonder if the world isn’t as wonderful as we thought
it was. And if we let it, our loving and innocent hearts harden a little and we
begin the race to grow up when we could have preserved that innocence in the
first place.
More years pass and soon we find
ourselves interacting with people our own age who act and behave in similar
ways. In some ways this serves as restoring hope, but the inevitable fact is
our peers only serve as competition in the race to maturity. We hold some in
high regards and in doing so poke and prod at the ones who don’t meet our
standards. It is the first time that we really doubt our own validity. We think
that if our peers don’t accept us, than it’s impossible for others to. The world
once again puts an obstacle is our paths. There seems to only be one path
filled with emptiness and trying to conform to a mold made by others. Our
hearts and innocence harden more. The pace of the marathon quickens and we do
our best to keep up.
The
anaconda of society is persistent and continuously presses against us. Some of
us enter high school with some of our innocence intact, while others sprint
ahead and are eager to catch their first glance at what is perceived to be “real
life.” Our peers become an even bigger part of our lives, and force their own
convictions on us. The storm of maturity engulfs us and slowly draws the last
bits of precious innocence form our bodies. The things that gave us happiness before
like spending time with family, playing a game, or swinging on the swing set
are replaced with what we are told will make us happy. Drugs, alcohol, and sex seem like the perfect
catalyst to spring us forward in the great race. By the time we are finally
done and ready to begin our lives outside of our sleepy home towns, we are
nothing but empty shells, desperately searching for an answer as to why life
has been so cruel to us. The blame is passed from one thing to another, but the
virus we have been injecting ourselves with makes us numb to the idea that it
could be our responsibility. Our hearts are now scabs, closed to the idea of
anything that won’t yield us satisfaction or pleasure. Society has claimed yet
another person with her evil transformation. And we set out and embark on our
own journeys, believing that we have completed the race and that we should
deserve more for running it as fast as we could.
Blame
is tossed around endlessly about why my generation is going downhill so fast. A
common misconception is that it is all our parents fault and that parents are
responsible for why we all want to grow up so fast. But it is our blindness and
selfishness that causes us to dump our mistakes onto the ones that raised us.
After all it seems like the easiest thing to do. In actuality it is our own
faults for not being able to identify our own destructiveness. Our parents
should be a way to ensure that a child has the best start and tools to help
them stay off the path of destruction.
So what
is the answer? It could be as simple or
complicated as you want to make it. We seek out a way to heal our damaged and broken
lives. Society offers many cures and tonics that claim to do the trick, but in
the end we end up being a blurred image of ourselves. We are fooled into
believing our best cannot possibly meet the universal standard of what is good
or exceptional. When we can learn to slow down and give ourselves permission to
have a loving, accepting, and kind heart is when we take the first step in
uncovering the vale that has encompassed our whole world. We can live with our
innocence and embrace anything that life presents to us. And yet the whole
world sits, and continues to pump garbage into our lives that we are now
expected to embrace.
Let’s
act and come out of the fire new. Instead of life engulfing us, maybe we can
change what it really means to live in the first place. And maybe someday we
can brag to our kids about how we were able to barricade ourselves from the
gloomy mist of society. We can stand up
and say that we are proud to have not been the first to cross the finish line.
