Blog 54
No Wonder the Kids Don’t Want to Work
I have been talking to young patients lately and was interested in their take of the world. I think the kids of today are a lot more informed than we were in our day, with TV, internet and with our modern sophisticated forms of communication.
The children seem a lot more savvy and up to date with what’s going on in the world. The thing I have noticed the most is the kids ability to say what they like and dislike. I know kids have always got upset or angry when they don’t get their own way, but this is different, this is what they don’t like on a bigger scale outside of their self focused needs.
It’s like a change of consciousness. It’s about how people treat each other, it’s about countries politics, and it’s about people’s power over other people with money. It’s about the manipulation of people, by the people with power. It’s about their views outside of themselves. I’m not saying the kids aren’t still focused of what’s in it for them, I’m just saying I have observed a moving trend of the young people; that they are observing what us grown ups are doing and how we live our lives.
These young people have expressed to me their observation of the adult world, were they spent 12 years at school learning, and not always learning stuff that is ever useful in their lives at all. Then going to university to get a degree on a subject that at 18 they think they want to do, only to discover it’s not really and are stuck with a qualification on a subject they don’t really want to do or alternatively they drop out and do something else.
Then they get a job. A job working for someone else, whose sole goal is for them to work hard and make them lots of money, and for their efforts they get a four week holiday each year. If they work hard hopefully there will be the reward of higher pay and a higher position. Then one day they will start their own business so that they get all the money, but also they get the stress, worry, and long hours. Then a mortgage, children, house, a boat, a holiday home, grow old, retiring and moving into a retirement home. Spend all their money on care when they can’t look after themselves and then die.
So the kids look at our lives and this is the summary.
You are born, taught how to walk, run around, and then at four you are told to sit down and learn. You stay sitting down and learning for the next 17 years until you are 21, then you stand up just to be told to sit down again to work for someone else.
They give you money so you can get a mortgage for 30 years, go fishing during your two week holiday at Christmas, grow old, get put in an old folks home and then die.
The young people look at this and say “Who invented that boring life?”
“What is the other option?”
“What’s plan B? Where is the freedom?”
I have just read this back Oh Dear! it sounds very depressing, so what is the other option?
Who did design this lifestyle?
Who did say this is the way you should live your life?
Whose construction is it?
Who benefits from this life we lead?
It doesn’t seem to be us, when you stand back and look at the big picture. It seems we are manipulated to believing that this is a great life style, something to look forward to. I must admit it seems pretty boring to me too, I’m on the kid’s side.
How can we change it, how can we create a more exciting and adventurous life, how do we have more control?
I can see why the kids don’t want to work.
To go somewhere and work for 40 hours, in a job they may not necessary like or are passionate about and only have a four weeks holiday a year doesn’t sound like freedom to me. I think young adults are starting to see that money to pay bills and a mortgage may not be enough incentive to buy into this lifestyle. More and more of our children are travelling and experiencing the world.
So what is the answer, and as they ask, we may not be able to give them an answer and we may not have worked out how to get out ourselves, and we are doing exactly what they don’t want to do. The Capitalist system has got most people locked into a certain way of life, but the kids can see that only people at the top benefit from that and we are just working for them. As one young adult said to me, “We become slaves to the machine”. Pink Floyd has a song about this called ‘Welcome to the machine’.
It is hard to see this when you are inside the system but the kids ain’t, they are outside looking in. They don’t want to spend their lives locked into a system that doesn’t benefit the whole, they see that hundreds of thousands of people are starving, dying in Africa and the rich could feed all these people-yet they see few doing anything about it. They see people destroying the planet and no one stopping them. They see wars in one country and United Nations helping them, then another country right next door with civil wars and they are not helping them. No wonder the kids are confused. Hey, us adults don’t necessary understand that ourselves.
So what is the answers, what do we tell the young people of this world?
Get a good education, make plenty of money and you will be happy but how many of us can role model that and its workings? I don’t have the answers to this either, I’m still trying to make heads or tails of this myself. I think it has something to do with knowing who you really are, your character, your personality, your shadow, your spiritual gifts, your purpose, and living life to the fullest with Gratitude and Generosity.
Well something like that!
See there was no mention of your job. My take on that is if your occupation is your purpose, you never work a day of your life. So my suggestion, go inspire the kids with the changes in your life, and maybe they won’t spend all their time playing XBox and Playstation, texting, boy racing, getting drunk and stoned, and wondering what the hell its all about!
I want to leave you with this one, I heard if your life was a Playstation game would the kids want to buy it and invite their friends around to play it?
Cheers Pete C.
