The good and bad aspects of choosing a title line (see above) for a column is once up there, the writer is bound to it throughout the piece. If the writer adheres to the subject of the title throughout all is well, but if he or she fails to address the title properly it may leave readers with the idea the writer needs to be tapped for the sillies (a phrase my father used; don’t ask me the origin but it conveys the message). I’ll offer the words and let readers decide if they are nice or not, but with hopes the overall theme is positive.
We are in an election year and because the negative creates more stir than the positive in terms of audience appeal, a sad commentary on human nature, and that appeal then realizes itself in advertising dollar payoffs; so, let’s look at these words from the last author listed in the title, Unknown:
“If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your body, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the people in the world. If you have money to spend as you wish and freedom to go anywhere you want, you are among the top 18% of the world’s wealthiest people. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and some spare change, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthiest. If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million people who will not survive the week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the agony of imprisonment and torture, or the horrible pangs of starvation, you are luckier than 500 million people alive and suffering. If you can read and understand this message, you are more fortunate than the 3 billion people who cannot see, cannot read and cannot access the knowledge and information that surrounds us.” This is a “count your blessings” message we all might consider.
When I recently doubted my value on the local planning commission, using the argument I was just too old to be making decisions about changes in society that I would realistically never see come to fruition, it seemed to me a younger person would be able to experience completed projects that were approved way back in time. I changed my mind when I heard the words of Hyacinth Loyson, French theologian, who said, “Society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in.” I will be in that seat for awhile longer, with the confidence my voice is of some worth.
“The total number of people that have been born number about a 100 billion. Now ask how many people possibly can be born. Just look at the genome and rearrange it to 10 to the 30th power, which is a billion trillion trillion, it’s likely even bigger than that, we’re the lucky ones, we are the ones who get to die because you only get to die for having lived. Most people who could ever exist will never even be born. So, take every occasion you can to smell the flowers, to drink in the sunsets and the sunrise and the majestic sky above you that they cradle through the nighttime hours, and celebrate life because you won the lottery.” —Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist/Science Communicator (interesting fellow is Neil).
When my generation were children, we played together, in groups usually separated by gender, we worked out communications on a real level when we agreed, and argued and supported and shunned depending upon how any activity was progressing. I remember girls marking sidewalks with chalk for rounds of hopscotch, taking turns jumping rope or bouncing a ball in foursquare, while we boys shot marbles crouched around a ring, played batter’s up for hours or rode bicycles up alleys and across vacant lots in a fast-paced game of follow the leader. The rapid changes in technology since those days has had an impact on one segment of the populace more that others.
Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt claims young life is now separated in two acts, the first act is what is described above, the play-based childhood where after-school kids gathered without parental supervision and worked out conflicts and developed skills; this lasted for thousands of years. Then in the 1990s to the early 2000s, society began keeping children indoors more with restricted outdoor play, but this did not greatly affect mental health. The next act is the phone-based childhood where in 2010 most kids had a flip-phone with no front facing camera, no internet, and no high-speed data, but by 2015 most kids had smart phones with all those functions, most notably Instagram, and, according to Dr. Haidt, “almost like someone turned a switch in 2013, girls in America and many other countries suddenly became very anxious, depressed and self-harming.”
That is a real affront to childhood, especially for the girls. While I greatly value organized sports and arts and other collective youth activities for girls, opportunities which did not exist a few decades ago, it seems we need to let our young people gather more in unsupervised activities and let them work out life on their own. It worked for millions of us.
As you can tell, I am still without socially relevant thoughts of my own, my brain seems stuck on a recent loss and won’t cooperate, and therefore I relied on the words of others to fill this space. So, though at a deficit at the present time, I can still end with words of my own.
Take care. Peace.
