Monday, April 25, 2011

What will become of us?

There was a time before we decided to have children that we just couldn't fathom bring children into this mess.  What's becoming of America? More and more everyday I wonder if we are just the world's largest trailer park.  "Tonight's top story Teen Mom beat down - caught on tape."

I have since decided that when you are not ready for children, you rationalize not having them with the creativity of a two-year-old that wants ice cream...greenhouse gases, world water shortage, war, hunger, pestilence..........the list goes on and on.

After you have them you start rationalizing on a whole new level.  World water shortage, well I turn the water off when I brush my teeth.  Greenhouse gases, I use cloth shopping bags.  Carbon footprint, I'll start turning out the outside lights when we go to bed.

Maybe it's the melancholy mood that I have been in lately, or the fact that the boys have been fighting like two roosters in a hen house but I've just been wondering, What's this world coming to?  I know every generation says that, I remember discussing with my Grandmother how much had changed in her lifetime.  But I feel the same way.  My first jobs out of college - I used electric typewriters, dot matrix printers, and green screens.  I didn't own a cell phone or a computer.

I look at my friends 18 year-old who is leaving for college with an iphone, laptop, and enough computer skills to take over the world.  He is very smart, savvy, and even getting scholarships will still walk away form a state school with $30,000 in student loans.  He's going to be amazing at whatever he does but having watched his mom struggle to raise three children on a teacher's salary he is majoring in International Law and Spanish.

What will become of us?  We've depleted the ozone, bankrupted wall street, and created more plastic then could ever be recycled. then asked the next generation to do better.  With what?

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