[2020-12-10] In support of youth
A few weeks back, I shared a post that included the poems Just A Boy by Edgar Albert Guest and Father Forgets by W. Livingston Larned. In both cases, adults acknowledge the tendency of grownups to unfairly hold youngsters to adult standards.
But it's not just adults who do this. Many young people make that same comparison and, sadly, conclude that they fall short. They fear that they're not as talented as the adults in their lives, such as parents, older siblings and even peers. They worry that they'll never be as successful. They believe that they're not as interesting.
So I was delighted when a friend passed along a widely shared (though new to me) story by Kurt Vonnegut:
When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of "getting to know you" questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, "Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them."
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: "I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them."
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could "win" at them.
Vonnegut's story illustrates the tendency of young people to think they're not special—talented, successful, interesting—unless they can do something in an extraordinary way.
More importantly to me, this story expresses how influential adults can be in letting young people know that they are enough—exactly as they are.
For me personally, I know that I sometimes worry about my children and other kids, fearing that they won't find their way and therefore won't be happy in life. Instead, I should focus on what they're interested in, activities they're dabbling in, attempts they're making to learn something new. This, surely, is as important as school and work to helping young people figure out what they want to do and be as they grow up.
My takeaway from Vonnegut's story is that we adults would do a service to young people if we showed enthusiasm for their interests and nurtured their passions. We could also help young people to see that—adults though we may be—we haven't figured everything out either. Our own willingness to try something new, even things we're not very good at, would Illustrate to young people what the archaeologist said: "I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them."
