It’s common place for some of today’s political sorts to speak of the present economic time as being quite horrible as compared to the past. They speak of the troubles that face young people and insist that this is the first generation that will not have the opportunities that were available in earlier times. I can’t speak for anybody else but I know that in my own case opportunity meant hard work. My first job was a summer gig in which I served as a receptionist at a medical clinic. I arrived promptly at eight thirty each morning so that I might be ready to answer the phones when they began to ring at the opening hour of nine. I generally worked until six in the evening but sometimes one of the doctors requested that I stay a bit longer to help close up after the late patients had left. For my efforts I was paid the grand salary of eighty eight dollars per month! (Yes, you read that correctly. I received twenty two dollars a week for working forty plus hours. A quick bit of math confirms that my salary was about fifty cents per hour.)
While I was busy working a “professional” job my brothers spent their summers at a roadside fruit and vegetable stand where they sat in the sweltering heat hoping to sell paper buckets of tomatoes and such. If I remember correctly they made about twenty five cents an hour which seemed like a gold mine to them because neither had yet turned sixteen years of age. My job was high living compared to theirs and I also managed to add a bit to my coffers with babysitting gigs on the weekends for which I received twenty five cents an hour. Over time my brothers and I managed to land an assortment of jobs all designed to pay for our extras like class rings, senior trips, and college. It never occurred to us that we should be outraged for having to put some sweat equity into our slow but sure progression up the socio-economic ladder. Continue reading “Living the Life You Choose”
I always hated the idea of cliques at school. These were the arbitrary groupings of individuals based on characteristics of some sort. There were the beautiful and popular crowd, the geeky crowd, the athletes, the shadow people that nobody much noticed, and those who rose above such silliness and simply associated with the people that they found to be interesting and friendly. The concept of mean girls and snobs are the stuff of movies. We laugh at the manufactured angst of the teenage years and yet there is a grain of truth in the stories of young people who feel bullied and alone because they have not achieved a desirous social status. Those who bleed into the edges of oblivion at school are often the victims of a complex web of dysfunctional parenting, mental or learning problems, abuse, and abandonment. They are the strange ones who tend to remain misunderstood and unloved by both their peers and the adults charged with their care. Because they are mostly quiet and unseen these shadow children rarely receive the attention that they so desperately need. The truth is that they are crying out in their silence and brooding but few people hear.
Most of us wander through life searching for a modicum of happiness. Just what brings joy will vary somewhat from person to person. There are those who need little more than the dawn of a new day of possibilities to feel a sense of satisfaction and others who appear to be constantly seeking some unknown evasive goal. As we go about our business each day we never really know what will happen to us. There are surprises and tragedies and routines awaiting us. Most of us work hard, plan, prepare, and even pray for blessings. We faithfully follow the rules, take care of ourselves and those around us and follow a steady course. In the back of our minds we almost always believe that we should somehow be rewarded for our diligence and good faith. The reality is that such recognition doesn’t always happen. We are not immune to disappointments, rejections, challenges, loss, and even death. All too often we have to shoulder responsibilities and hard times that seem unfair and may even prompt us to question every aspect of who we are and what we believe. Maintaining optimism in the face of severe hardships is a daunting task and yet we have all witnessed those incredible individuals who somehow find the strength and the will to do so. 
As we grow older we often romanticize our youth. This doesn’t just happen with those of us who are sixty something, even adults as young as thirty or forty are often guilty of viewing the newest generation as being far less industrious than ours was in “the old days.” We all know the kind of thinking to which I am referring, “When I was a kid we had it hard! We got up at the crack of dawn and walked a mile to school in the snow, uphill, both ways! Kids today are spoiled!”
