Being Older

It's really tragic how harshly people treat young people who make mistakes, and I think that might be something that I need to unlearn. When you think about your life preceding, say, 20 years of age, it paints a ludicrous picture. Half your life has been learning how to be ambulatory and how your brain operates. The other half is spent in a schooling system that does not prepare you for leaving home and making it on your own. None of the practical skills required to run a household, or run a business, or even make plans for your future are guarenteed to be present in young people. We just don't get taught how to be actual people.

So who do we blame? Our parents? Yeah, that's a good idea - expect the people who were born three or four decades ago to instill the necessary abilities into the next generation. How the hell are they going to pull that off? Forty years ago, student debts and technology and the war on terror and all sorts of insane, fucked up things have happened to the world, and parents don't have any idea of how to structure a life to cope with the overwhelmingly different world from what they grew up in.

I mean, that's the culture of the 21st century, isn't it? Years of fucking up. Years of digging upwards, trying to get past the obstacles. Constantly striving, constantly fighting, constantly falling down. I don't know - I think we're just too harsh on people.