I'm beginning to understand...

An interaction with some kids, today, who take school hardly seriously at all taught me an important lesson today...

What most adults try to do, much of the time...is to prove why should be taken seriously...

When they haven't earned it...

When they fucked off all that time in their younger years...and many of them still do, in a substantive sense...meaning, not thinking nearly enough...and not being humble in front of those who do...

And then demanding to be taken seriously when they haven't earned it and don't deserve to be taken seriously...

There's several people I can think of, right now, very much like the students I'm dealing with, right now...

They take themselves too seriously...because they don't take whether or not they have something important or relevant to add to the conversation nearly seriously enough...

Meaning...they put their egos...before their purposes and the substance of the matters that they want to be taken seriously about, in life...

And then they wonder why they're not taken more seriously than they are...or why noone is listening when they have very little to say...

I'm learning -- from the state debate tournament I judged this last weekend -- that the smartest folks...high school kids, included -- come to a lot of the same conclusions, generally...and are in more fundamental agreement...

Because they just take the issues, involved, more seriously...than their pettiness or their egos...

You can always tell this type of person...

Because they, generally, have something substantive to say...

How impressed I would be to meet more people who had something to say worth listening to...

We sure could afford to have a lot more of them in this world...

Which explains why only some of them have anything worth saying that stands the tests of time...

But I'm also learning that there are real limits, I think, to our ability to inspire and lead and coerce others to take life and its consequences for themselves and for others more seriously...that I can keep looking...and that I can only hope that I can keep finding ways to transcend...

But the sad fact, at this point, I think...is that some people just have more serious things to say about life...and to contribute to our understanding of it...

And those people are few and far between...

And most of the dumbasses in the world...don't care...because they're dumbasses...meaning...kinda dumb...but also...generally kinda dumb...because they just aren't all that serious about life, in the first place...

Life, I'm sure...will eventually give them plenty of reason to get serious...

But most people have to learn most of those lessons the hard way, I'm afraid...

Which is why we need more people to take those consequences more seriously...so we can all take responsibility for a world where everyone can learn those lessons easier...and, at the extremes of learning and our experience...with less danger and more security for us and our lives...

But having that world...meanings having a lot more people taking life a lot more seriously...for real...meaning...taking life and its consequences and studying those things...more seriously than our desire to be taken more seriously than we've earned...

It is true...that everyone knows the path...and that few people walk it...but an awful lot of people fake it...in lieu of walking it...which is really the most irresponsible move, of all...

I have work to do:):)...

Have a good day, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben