WE NEED HOPE FOR OUR CHILDREN and YOUTH!
I have a 26-year-old daughter. She graduated from university with an Environmental Policy degree. After a year in AmericCorps, she decided to follow her heart to Montana, and is an assistant teacher in a Montessori preschool, and volunteers with a program taking disadvantaged teens out into nature. In her spare time she skis, hikes, fly fishes, floats the rivers, and parties. She also babysits and is on-call for fire dispatch with the US Forest Service.
On the morning of November 9, 2016, she called me bawling. She said she couldn't look her students in the eye (at that time she was a parapro working with an autistic elementary student).
Although I am "biased" towards her going on to a graduate degree and serious, adult-like career, I am entirely sympathetic to her drive to enjoy and live every day - in the present, not for the future.
I also feel the hugest of obligations to her generation and those to follow. FOR FUCK'S SAKE! This is about THEIR future; all the things we taught them about honesty, integrity, ethics.
Was it all a big lie?
I think it takes a ton of courage to have a child in this world.