This Impatient World
I have come to the conclusion that this world has long overtaken me -- I am unable to keep up. Thoughts fizz in my head and evaporate. I try to order them and they disperse, to return later to mock me.
We all know the status of black people in the U S. But, shooting them for target practice.?What has changed? What the hell, Mr Biden,is going on? What are you going to do about this? Why are there so many guns freely circulating in this rich land?
The Floyd murder does not seem to have made any difference. Daunty, that boy, Adam, and many more. It is not the general population that is killing now (though that too happens predictably often); it is the police, who (cliche') are supposed to protect us. Who watches the watchers??
This is not the general view of America I had. I have not seen the picture clearly. My compassionate American friends will be just as bewildered as I am.
Here, in U K, the young struggle with the incarceration of lock-down. Some break the rules and spill out; others become progressively depressed, inward-looking, lost. What will restore them to their former ebullient selves? I say U K, but in India too, I speak with the mothers of teen-age girls. We are all in the same dark place.
That Social Media world, which is their natural habitat is not helping them now. Its toxic fumes destroy their self-confidence. I remember the pouting girls on Tik-Tok and Instagram, pushing their boobs out and their bums. Many aspiring to reach that zenith of shape, which the media has instructed them to aspire to. Somewhere along the line they have imbibed the instruction that they have to please the BOYS. Boys who are just as lost as them now, but are learning some dangerous habits in their attitudes to the opposite sex.
I cannot see the schools doing anything to teach the youngsters self-respect. We need to find a solution for the willful cruelty of the social media world. I suggest creative enterprises to my granddaughter -- gardening, embroidery, volunteering to help others. They have to start looking outwards, realize that in helping others you help yourself. But none of these involve screens and are not attractive to them.
I remember my father's question to me almost daily, at the end of the day, when I was a teenager. Washed? Finished your homework? And what did you do for someone else today?
