Look Beyond the Surface

The news of the death of rocker David Bowie and the listings of all his accomplishments has me thinking of my mortality and what kind of legacy I’m leaving behind. (David was the same age my big brother is now. I admire the both of them.) I’m afraid my obit notice will be very short: she loved to garden and crochet.

However, legacies are for famous people such as presidents and rock stars. I’m not in either category, so it’s not really something over which I need to obsess. I will be content with what I’ve accomplished. I hope my daughters will remember me fondly, and realize that I did as well as I could raising them. (Does that sound faintly self-indulgent? Ah, well, I’ll allow myself to be that way once in a while.)

Too many older people have the “Get off my lawn!” attitude towards the youth of today. They lament tattoos, piercings, and dress as outward signs of the decline of morality and responsibility in anyone younger than they. They don’t look beyond the surface to see the tattooed and pierced server at the restaurant who might be working two jobs in order to provide for his family. They forget all the things they did at that age, things that were done in rebellion against their own parents, things done to separate their identity from the generation before them.

My generation grew our hair long. We wore bell-bottom and low-slung pants, with our belly buttons exposed. We wore mini skirts. We dabbled in drugs. (Who started that revolution?) We went off, hitchhiking most likely, to big outdoor concerts. And yet, somehow, we have managed to hold down jobs and/or have careers, raise families, own homes, and retire to comfort. From that comfort we take potshots at today’s youth.

It has always been this way: people think the way they grew up was the ideal and the way it should remain. I remember my father telling me how he was expelled from high school for getting a crewcut. And he wasn’t allowed to return until his hair had grown out. Back then, it was the boys in gangs who got crewcuts.

My big brother wasn’t allowed to wear jeans to school because where the denim faded from wear emphasized a part of his anatomy the authorities preferred to think didn’t exist. My big sister wasn’t allowed to wear trousers to school no matter the weather, most likely for the same reason. I was sent home many times to change because my miniskirts were too short, again the same reason (never mind that I also wore colored tights and pettipants underneath). Cheerleaders weren’t to have long hair, I don’t know why. Nowadays the schools prohibit the wearing of leggings or sagging jeans.

We keep trying to regulate the outward appearance of our young while at the same time saying to not judge a book by the cover! Perhaps we need to focus more on the character of our young. Do they care for others? Are they helpful? Are they working part-time jobs or involved in extra-curricular activities? Are they helpful? Are they respectful? Are they responsible?

We should support and applaud when they do well. After all, they are our young. They will be raising our grandchildren or great-grandchildren. And those coming generations will find their own ways to rebel against our antiquated ideas. They will carve out their own identities. Life will go on.