Remember when you were a kid? How you thought adults knew it all. How you thought adults had it all? Most importantly, how you thought adults were blessed with some secret and only when you finally became an adult - all would be revealed. Remember?
Well I’m here to tell you - and you’ve probably figured it out for yourself - it ain’t so.
I guess this fairy tale has to be. Otherwise, kids wouldn’t obey, do as they’re told. There would be a total breakdown in the social order. So the myth of the all-wise, all-knowing, all-having adult endures.
I remember being young and thinking adults had it all. They knew what they were doing, where they were going, our purpose here. Then I got older and realized they were just making it up as they went along. Adults also didn’t have much more sense than an 8-year-old. Probably less. They’ve failed to improve the world.
Young people — be like Greta and turn your rage and justifiable anger toward all adults who’ve given you this world of assault weapons, greed, overconsumption, climate death, permanent student debt, and schools which you enter every morning with the thought in the back of your head that you may not come out alive this afternoon because the adults have let the wrong people stay in charge and control the rest of us. We adults have failed you and you should not tolerate a single one of our excuses. - Michael Moore
But the catch is, the next batch of adults will also fail to improve the world. I kid you not. Why? Because we don’t know what we are doing? We’re filled with conflicted agendas, selfishness, base animal emotions, all layered with a sweet dollop of pie in the skyness that keeps us from ever seeing how rotten we truly are.
So what to do?
Nothing. Enjoy the ride. Do your best along the way. Oh, and try to treat our children a little more like the better adults they truly are.
A man finishes his house, then he dies. Ancient Chinese proverb.
The Things We Don’t Know
Today
standing under
the huge cross
towering over
this city that believes,
Matagalpa
this city of thieves,
I realized
I didn’t have a clue
What I’m doing here
or
What next to-do.
As a kid
I couldn’t wait
to be an adult
and sleep wherever I wanted
and do whatever I wanted
and eat whatever I wanted
and come home whenever I wanted
but mostly,
I couldn’t wait
to know
what them adults knew.
All the secrets of the universe,
the reasons for this,
the reasons for that
and most of all
why we’re here -
the purpose of it all.
Now 59
heading on 109,
I know shit
only that adults lied
only that there is no answer back
when late at night
I whisper my deepest worries
into the indifferent air
of a darker night.
Either that or
I’m plum stupid,
there’s a glitch in the matrix,
I’m wearing two left shoes.
What about you?