young ones

I was at a birthday bash a week or so ago. There was talk about "those young ones these days"... "the cane should be brought back at school".... "no manners nowadays".... "too many teenage mothers".... "we need to give them discipline". As is my nature I couldn't help but interject that ACTUALLY there are a lot of young people out there who make big life changes, who do not follow their parents, who choose a different life for themselves and who do incredible and very many positive things, for others as well as for themselves. I was greeted back with dumbfound expressions. What was I talking about?


It's so easy to generalize, to blame, to pinpoint failure. Too easy in my opinion.


When was the last time you did something wondrous? Something entirely not profitable for someone else? Something selfless just to help out? Have you or haven't you? Did you never make a mistake in your life? Do you know everything? Of course not. 


I came across a young lady's story today and was reminded of the birthday party's mutterings regarding the inadequacies of young folk's behaviour. Isn't it up to adults to set better examples perhaps? To guide in a non preachy way? To be encouraging? Or can we really just have more confidence in younger generations? Why would that be so hard?

From Fastcompany: "Maggie Doyne left on a post-high school trip to Nepal and never came back. After seeing the way kids--many orphans--were living, she called her parents and asked them to send over her life savings, with that money she founded The Kopila Valley Children's Home in 2006. Four years later, she is the legal guardian for 30 orphans and just completed building a school for them. Doyne talked to Fast Company about her remarkable journey, starting as a girl in Mendham New Jersey and ending up a leader for social change in rural Surkhet, Nepal."


Read the whole blogpost here. I'd say that most definitely generalizations aren't very helpful, positive individuals are.
Maggie's website: http://blinknow.org/