Why kids are reasonably skeptical of their parents (and why parents are reasonably skeptical of their children)

After a second viewing of Brokeback Mountain, one of the at least 5 movies in 2005 that should have outlasted the cynical racial politics of Crash for nomination, nevertheless winning, Best Picture, it all of a sudden occurred to me why kids are quite reasonably skeptical of their parents.

It's the bitterness. It's the cynicism and the pain and the bitterness that accumulates on their hearts over time (that is the answer to Abraham Maslow's question of what happened to those cute, bubbly kids who grow up to be worn down adults). Kids sense it, intuitively, even if they don't always know what it is. Adults carry it with them around pain they've never resolved in their heart when they don't practice forgiveness and letting go, which leaves them sad, angry, bitter adults. A fairly tragic way to live life, really, if you ask me.

Kids have dreams, quite reasonably. And their parents' and teachers' and other adults' bitterness and cynicism often cuts against those dreams. So they grow skeptical of those same adults, quite reasonably. Cynical too, perhaps, absorbing the pain of having adults rationalize their pain and cynicism and hurtful ways onto their children. Hopefully adults and kids work through this, over time. But, in the meantime, kids are skeptical of anyone who might talk down them or their dreams or rationalize cynical realities. And a lot of kids, sadly, probably grow cynical about the world like their parents, just cynical about their parents as much as anyone else. It's a tragic little cycle, sadly.

Parents and teachers and adults are, quite reasonably, skeptical of their children, as well. They are skeptical that they know what they are doing without adult guidance (which they generally don't, even as they are almost always completely convinced that they have never met adult guidance they can trust). Kids can be a little arrogant, in my experience, with a little knowledge being dangerous. But better adults patiently love them and guide them, nonetheless, into adulthood, the best they know how, always, no matter who they are how much better or worse they deal with their children.

Everyone thinks they know what others around them don't know and is, therefore, reason for why they should be running the show, since the folks around them are so clueless. And the same goes for kids, often, as much for adults, I think. I know I felt that way much of my life, until I realized that no matter what role you play, you still have win peoples' trust and learn how to work with them, no matter how high or low you are in the food chain. Otherwise, they just won't work with you. Not for real.

It is too bad that so many people live such sad, bitter lives. That they carry around their pain on their heart like a trophy from the past that they just don't want to let go of. But it is a fact of life that leads many people to rationalize the ugliest and most cynical realities, and which leads their children to become skeptical that they have any clue how to be happy in the world and wonder what in the world they think they are thinking that they would follow their lead or example when they are so clearly unhappy, if they would take a second to be honest with themselves.

Kids want to be happy. And they don't want to be unhappy like their parents. And so, they are, quite reasonably, skeptical of any advice from someone who would want to lead them into a life of similar unhappiness.

It's the healthiest of instincts for kids to have. No matter how cynical adults may be about their children, as they are about everyone else in the world, now that they've lived a little bit and been hurt by the big, bad world and carry their pain around like a blanket (more like a shell, typically) that they think will somehow protect them from getting hurt again.

It's a sad reality. But it is also a hopeful one that kids can, intuitively, often see through that pain and that heartache and that cynicism to see that there is something more hopeful for them and their future.

And good for them.

Love,
Ben

Being decent

Nine years ago, liberals like myself were aghast and outraged as Republican prosecutors charged President Bill Clinton with perjury and obstruction of justice in the Monica Lewinsky investigation by Kenneth Star. "There was no crime that took place," we argued. "There should have been no investigation in the first place."

"No," conservatives argued. "It doesn't matter if there was a crime involved. What matters is that the President lied under oath, crime or not."

Nine years later, those same liberals all argue that Lewis Libby should go down for the same crime, and conservatives argue for a pardon.

All's fair in love and war, you think? Not really, I don't think. Just the same old bullshit.

What we need to learn to do, all of us, is to do the decent thing. And stop playing games with politics and prosecutions and one another with some self-righteous sense that any of us have all the answers. We don't. It doesn't matter what party or what ideology or what law we operate under.

None of us have all the answers.

Which is exactly why we need to be more decent to one another, not tougher and more mean-spirited.

None of us embody that elusive perfection that we so wish that we embodied, but cannot possibly be, no matter how tough we are with one another.

We've all been kind of pricks to one another, is the truth. Not just for the last 6 years. But since the dawn of humanity. And the only way forward is to leave that tragic legacy behind.

The only way forward is to be more decent.

Everything else is us deceiving ourselves and one another. The consequence of a long legacy of forcing and repressing ourselves and one another to pretend to be better than we really are.

But if we can learn to embrace our inner pricks, and be more decent with ourselves and one another, we can move forward.

And that is the only true path of progress.

Love,
Ben