It’s my life!
Dear lost teenager, please think this
through. When lost, one should
always look down – and voilà, there
shall you find thyself. Look at the
sneakers on your feet, the pants
sagging halfway to your knees or that
skirt that is cut just too high (in fact I
wish more boys would hike and more
girls would sag…alas that is a
different article). Keep looking to the
watch or bracelet, braces, bed sheet
and bed; bedroom too, if you will,
house, garden and car. Which of
these things did you contribute to
purchasing? What is it that you can
show, to prove that this indeed is
your life? In fact, were it not for the
seed or womb supplied by the
parents standing right in front of you,
YOU WOULD NOT EXIST. So please,
do the world a favor and say yes sir
or yes mother and live a happy life!
Leave me alone!
Listen, the only things left alone in
this world are the things we do not
care about; they are the things
destined to whittle up and die. Think
of yourself as a plant and your
parents as the hands that water,
shade and prune. Obviously, you do
not want to be left alone without
water or food – no, you are more than
happy to sit down at the table and be
fed the food that you probably didn’t
have a hand in preparing. You also
don’t mind the warm bed on a rainy
day, or that roof you don’t give a
second thought to, right? But when
it comes to pruning, well, then you
are off your rocker and this is World
War 3. Guess what happens to plants
that are not pruned: 1) they have a
decimated lifespan, 2) they produce
increasingly dull blooms, 3) they
grow wildly and unattractively, and 4)
they cannot multiply. So the next
time you decide to say, or even think
the words leave me alone , remember
that what you are asking for is to
become a bore that bounces around
from place to place, or job to job
annoying people. But hey, at least
that way, you will not live very long
and there won’t be other parts of this
world that will see more of you.
I have a right to make my own
mistakes!
No, you do not! And the reason you
do not is because once again your
teenage brain has not thought this
statement through enough to create a
complete clause. Whether it is same-
sex marriage, abortion, pre-marital
sex, everyone seems to be talking
about rights. Well, here’s the rub: a
right does not mean much until the
person exercising or neglecting that
right understands its consequences
and is willing to pay the price. The
question is not whether you have the
right to do what you want or not –
clearly everyone in this internet age
is going zillion miles a minute, and
everything is now or never. The
problem is not in the doing, it is in
the thinking and the acceptance of
responsibility for the consequences.
No sane parent would argue that
experience is not the best teacher. It
truly is. Yet, what so few stop to ask
before barging through life making
mistakes is this: do I know the
consequences and am I willing to live
with them? If we did think about the
consequences of our right to make
mistakes then many of us would have
not taken that fork in the road that
led to heartache, heartbreak and
bitterness. Instead that wrinkled
hand holding up a contemplative chin
would be resolute and not regretful,
as our eyes gaze out on a life well
lived, knowing that we really did
know then what we know now.
In short, listen to your parents,
