I’m an adviser for our middle school yearbook this year. Naturally, I dragged out my old (I’m talking 1987 – old!) high School Yearbook for ideas. You know how you were supposed to be in bed an hour ago and convince yourself that you just want to check your Instagram feed real quick before turning the lights out? Somehow, you end up doing a Google search on conspiracy theories and browsing Pinterest for potluck recipes?
Two hours later…
That was me with my Yearbook propped on my lap that night before bed. I reminisced over old homecoming rally photos and cringed at all the ‘80s hairstyles. I was curious about where the popular jocks and those voted “most likely to succeed” were today and considered trying to do – you guessed it – Google searches on them. (Don’t worry, I restrained myself.)
It’s not easy facing reality.
Mentally comparing my senior class photo with the image I have memorized from the mirror every day, I knew my Youth was gone. Now making their bold appearance are unruly gray hairs and mysterious lines creating tiny maps across my face. Greeting my reflection every morning, I know the day will come when I will ask the woman in the mirror, “Do I know you?”
Since my early youth, I have always kept journals. They contain many different forms of “Bucket Lists” – things I wanted to do or accomplish in my life before I died (not that I took death very serious back then). Fast approaching 50 years old, my Bucket List has become more of a discarded bathtub thrown out in a back field somewhere.
Two items remained on my list for many years running:
- I was going to run a shelter for abused women.
- I planned to become a journalist for National Geographic magazine – traveling the globe, writing about isolated rain forest tribes and documenting uncharted territories.
Never once did I stop to consider how I was going to pursue BOTH of these time-consuming dreams in one lifetime. I was young and, in my youthful mind…invincible.
Recently, in an 8th grade social studies class I was in, students discussed how poor decisions from today could follow them all the way to their grave. One student remarked sarcastically, “That’s years away. I gotta enjoy life now. Besides, I don’t plan to ever die.” We also talked about how children in other countries often have adulthood forced on them at an early age. The general consensus of the students was, “What does that have to do with me?”
It’s as if they lack the capacity to grasp any reality past their own foreheads. Which, actually, isn’t far from the truth. According to one scientific study, adolescents’ social-emotional systems crave constant stimulation (Gee, that’s pretty obvious…) but their prefrontal cortex (on the other side of that forehead) has not developed enough to control those impulses.
Thank goodness there is an explanation for the insanity that overcomes our kids in those teen years. Why they often cave to peer pressures, substance abuse, sexual promiscuity, and other crazy impulses like texting while driving and ignoring car seat belts.
Those of us that have grown up have our work cut out.
How can we convince our youth that invincibility is a treacherous deception? The recklessness of youth and their confidence in invincibility is exactly what extremist groups prey on to recruit them for dangerous campaigns and how pedophiles and traffickers lure them into compromising positions. Sure, those are unlikely scenarios, but not totally unrealistic.
If we can guide them through the swirling waters of their youth to the safer shores of adulthood, they will be able to look back – as many of us have – and ask themselves, “What was I thinking!?”
Wait until they pull out that old yearbook someday or gasp in horror at the first gray hair one unsuspecting morning.
Welcome to my world, kid…
Postscript:
I love the group Mercy Me! Here is one of my favorite songs from them called “Dear Younger Me” about writing a letter to your “younger self”. Enjoy!
