Why The Future Wasn't Always Yours

The Beginning of The Future

Or, actually, nine months later, give or take a few days. You’re going to be as soon as old mom and dad, or mom and that guy she got drunk with and hooked up in the men’s room at a concert with, finished the deed on that magic day. That’s the perfect day in mom’s schedule of biological movements during the monthly clock. It’s the day when an egg is primed and in the right place to receive and she was to meet the guy that would fertilize her egg. After that, it’s all magic.

Today, the day you popped out, the day mom and whoever’s around got to see you for the first time, mom was so glad to get you out of her. Don’t take it wrong. Those final few months of pregnancy, gestation, being a walking incubater, or whatever…seem like they’re going to be uncomfortable as hell. If you were born with the male side of things, you won’t have to watch your inners expanding outward, and feel something inside you that reminds you of a Ridley Scott movie. At least until you find beer.

That’s right, only one of them is pregnant!

Now that you’re exploded out of mother, and have that guy to look at as father, what’s next?

The fact is, your future, for most of you, is already written. It’s already set and all you’re doing is beginning to fill in the world’s biggest blank. You’re about to fill in that giant dash you’ll see, hopefully not too soon, but kids are all drug to these things. You’ll see it at a funeral, where you’re bored and antsy, and having to stand still.

You’ll see it on the headstones. John Doe, 1954 to 2015. Sometimes they’ll say cool things like, Friend, Father, Husband, etc…

To most people, the dates represent more than anything else. Then, the few words that are engraved onto the stone. To the few who have thought about it deeply, that — — between the dates is where the real story resides. Unfortunately, we can’t interpret that with everything it means.

Happy Birthday!

It’s not your birthday, not today, but with each anniversary of the day you appeared that first time, you get to celebrate.

As you move ever closer to adulthood, what you’re doing now, or what you’re told you’re doing, is shaping your future. It’s shaping your outcome. Everything you’re exposed to is making you what you will become; whether it’s noticable or not.

At birth, certain things are guaranteed. Then, there is the variables.

• Parents
• Environment
• How nurtured you are
• Interests, both picked up and introduced to you
• Health changes, or from birth issues
• The effects of the world on you

Those are all the things that are going to shape you, mold you, and in some cases, solidify your future existence.

Parents

Whether that little guy realizes it or not, he’s one of the lucky few. He’s on a nature walk, with two parents, who are collectively showing him the world. Unfortunately, these days, life is so complicated that fewer kids today than ever before will experience this. And, whether the parents realize it, it’s important.

As the child of a single parent, who wasn’t exposed to a father until I was ten when my mom remarried, there were few of these types of outings. I survived. But as I grew older, and started to develop my own observations of the world, I realized how important these things were to children.

The ones who got to experience the two parent system, with the best of the nurturing parents do, grow up statistically better than those who go without it. Then, the parenting style that the children from stable, two parent homes, will use is distinctly different than the style of someone who doesn’t know how to parent well. It’s something we learn as we grow up. We’re shown how to be mothers and fathers.

As most of us no doubt know, the days of the two parent household are nearly extinct. Entire parts of our country either suffer from the lack of two parent homes due to economics, circumstances, or cultural issues. It gets even worse if a child is born into the cultural side of the problem, because they’ll grow up seeing it as normal rather than unusual, and the cycle will likely continue.

The fact is, children are most likely better off with two active parents in the picture than one, and there comes a time in a child’s development that one not being there, whether we notice it or not, is doing damage. Yes, they are missing something and they recognize it, feel it from the one that is there trying, or they pulled the short straw and the one that is there is not ideal. And it can often by the mother’s who aren’t there, by their choice. Which tends to hurt the nurture side of the equation.

Environmental Factors/Nurturing

Even for a short time, to know the feeling on the left is more beneficial than the one on the right. Because the one on the right is of a child growing up lonely. If you’ve ever met someone in that picture, then you’ve likely had a thought or two about their future. Lonely children will tend to go down a deep and dark path if not a dangerous one, filled with problems that aren’t easily noticed if you’re not watching.

Parenting in the modern years we live in shouldn’t include this. It wasn’t that way, not always.

As a single father, I took my son as many places with me as I could. Yes, I had to work, and desperately needed the grandparents to watch him at times, but whenever I could, it was me and him.

Even that wasn’t enough. What was he missing. He was missing the experience of having a mother and a father, and of having people around him that taught him how to be happy. Happiness is best taught by example, and unfortunately, my divorce left me in a deeply damaged place, and my job at the time exposed me to degrees of trauma and violence that I didn’t realize how badly they affected me.

What changed from the day he arrived? His mother waited two years before deciding it wasn’t the life she wanted, and she was gone. Her mental health issues materialized, and she began living a very dark lifestyle. I was still very much there and committed, but it got harder. I didn’t know how to heal, how to let go of the pain, and how to deal with things I was encountering before the era men were allowed to have feelings.

Furthering Their Interests

We try to introduce our children to things we’re interested in. But, my son wasn’t going to be deeply into fishing, had too much heart to shoot bambi, and was artistic. Okay, that’s the way things go. You love your children and hope for the best.

For a long time he was an avid fan of professional wrestling, having grown up around fans But it wasn’t going to be, because in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t a clear path toward becoming a professional wrestler. In the early 90s, before the breaking of Kayfabe by the industry, nobody knew how they stars hit television. Unlike today, where there’s a place they can go try out, train, and grow.

One of the scariest things a kid gets into is extreme sports. Skateboarding is under that monicker, and there were many booboos, scrapes, and a few fractures. It happens. But it’s one of those things that to forbid it means they’re going to want to do it more.

Then, came music. I wasn’t a big fan of it initially, but did buy him the guitar to get started, and even went to a performance. At the time, I had a Ford Explorer, was single, and made for an easy and cheap roadie. I even paid for the gas.

Furthering, nurturing the interests of our youth, is the only real way of stearing them toward something they love and hopefully will use to bring them much success in the world, or at least long term joy. Since I mentioned he was a he, eventually he found girls, and much like most guys, was very distracted for a while.

Health and Mental Health

Healthy children are better off than children growing up in an unhealthy way. That said, some children do grow up with a health issue, such as asthma. Under the right circumstances, health issues are negatable in the overall outcome. Meaning they don’t have to affect a child’s long-term story.

But, what about the mental health issues that children are going to suffer? PTSD isn’t just for soldiers and cops. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people are affected by traumatic events, and those events can lead to isolation, depression, mistrust, and paranoia.

Imagine the difference between the child with the two loving, supportive, and committed parents, and the kid who’s mom sticks him in front of the television, with a tablet, and barely pays him any attention. One of those children’s problems will go unattended for much longer than the other, meaning it’ll likely be adulthood before they get help.

Then, there are those that go unnoticed, due to other things. Imagine something like ADHD. It’s usually spotted in grade school, but we don’t live in a world where teachers have that magic number of students that allows them to notice something different about a young lady or fella.

There are many things that can be said about the need for health screenings, and even mental health screenings for teenagers, that might help us to produce more productive and successful adults as opposed to the levels of mediocrity our society has tolerated for decades.

The World and Its Effect on People

Lastly, let’s look at the overall effect of the world on our young, and ourselves, for that matter.

Starting in 2001, which is a good year to begin, let’s look at how the world has changed.

As my son was about to turn ten years old, his entire generation was treated to a day that showed over 3,000 of their fellow Americans killed as the Pentagon and the Twin Towers were attacked. It was replayed on a loop for days, as that was all anybody could think about. Schools closed, public gatherings were halted, and the world was about to enter a period of war that would last longer than Vietnam, Korea, and nearly all of the US involvement in World War 2.

When we were being raised, in about the seventh or eighth grade, a teacher challenged us to look at the news and ask our parents about what was going on in the world. Every day, for the first fifteen minutes, we discussed current events in the world. Would you want your young children to participate in such a thing today.

From the news cycle to what we see with our bare eyes, the world has a serverely negative affect on us all, whether we feel it or not. And this, has, for an entire generation, created a degree of worry that ours, and our grandparents generations, never knew.

Final Thoughts

There needs to be a degree of change in how we approach the world. Too much attention to the worlds events is showing to be negative on people. Much of that is because the news cycles run on negativity, because it gets better ratings.

But, at the same time, we need to take the time to look at how we’re building the world for the next generation. From the moment we’re old enough to risk becoming parents, there’s a need for us to consider the long view of things.

It’s as much up to us as it is our young as to what they’ll be able to do with the — that will go between their start and end dates. If you want those dashes to mean something, start looking at the world around you more carefully, and making decisions that drive you and your children in a direction that fills those dashes with the most happy memories possible.