When I was young, I received a Tyco racing car set one Christmas morning. It was already assembled and ready to go. I remember my father looking really haggard that morning. He was more than a little out of it. He stated that Santa kept him up all night banging around downstairs and putting the racing track together.
I'm sure it's clear to anyone old enough to be browsing the internet unsupervised that it was my Dad who assembled the race set, staying up until the wee hours of the morning. It was not however, clear to me.
Maybe that should have been the year I figured it out. However, my parents were a little too good at convincing me that make believe things like ghosts and monsters existed (more on that another time). I think that backfired on them in the form of my naivete.
I don't remember what age I was when that obvious Santa-debunking clue in the form of my exhausted father went flying over my head. Truthfully, I'm a little ashamed to try and figure it out at the moment. I will say that I remember sometime later arguing with fellow students that Santa was real. I was in the fourth grade.
I know my father loved me in spite of myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if that morning, just for a few moments, he thought I was a complete asshole.
Though he's no longer with us, I feel my father and I shared the same frustrations regarding certain attitudes. Like him, my strength is in my ability to work. I'm less of a thinker than he was, but the amount of effort I put in and what I've accomplished on any given day is pretty clearly defined, if only to me. I have difficulty tolerating anyone young and naive that refuses to see the amount of work adults have to do to keep everything going.
Young people (and I speak from experience) have a hard time coping with the time and effort it takes to accomplish anything of note. I don't think this is a new phenom, but it is something evident in the young people of modern society who don't have to work the coal mines at age twelve. Children--and sometimes teenagers, and sometimes even young adults--can't deal with all that work. They view it as impossible and something only an adult can accomplish though mysterious means.
If a young person accomplishes something, they regard it as grueling and consuming of all their time. If an adult does something for them, it's magic.
I don't begrudge the young for this mindset (I more begrudge my younger, stupider self). Young people eventually learn by sink-or-swim methods nowadays and hopefully grow into responsible adults. What concerns me is that in this day of specializations and technology, there are more and more adults from various generations unwilling to learn or understand how things work around them if it's not their job to learn it. It's almost as if the technological world, and just the world of knowing or wanting to figure out how things work, have become a kind of magic to them.
Think about it the next time you volunteer to look at a copier with a paper jam, or a printer that has a weird error message coming up, or a program on a colleague's PC that isn't working in a textbook fashion. You're not an expert. You never even attended that laughable orientation session. But you've finagled devices like this before. And will you look at that, you got your hands dirty and the doohickey works again!
Now go to your boss, your peer, whomever. Tell them you fixed it and explain how. Then take in the million mile blank stare they will in all likelihood give you.
You could be speaking in what is both your native tongue in the simplest words possible, maybe even slowing your words down a bit ("IIIIII, turrrrrrnnnned iiit offffffffffff thennnnnnnnnnn ooooooonnnnnnnn agaiinnnnnnnnnnn"). They will still look at you like you're using a made up language found in a H.P. Lovecraft story.
I think about these people who seem to take pride in being dumbfounded. I've come to the conclusion that their ancestors must have been the type to burn accused witches.
After all, if they couldn't figure something out, it had to be witchcraft.
A few centuries back, they would be burning me for teaching their children to read.
That can't happen today, but give it another generation.
Work. Magic. They can be scary stuff.
I'm sure it's clear to anyone old enough to be browsing the internet unsupervised that it was my Dad who assembled the race set, staying up until the wee hours of the morning. It was not however, clear to me.
Maybe that should have been the year I figured it out. However, my parents were a little too good at convincing me that make believe things like ghosts and monsters existed (more on that another time). I think that backfired on them in the form of my naivete.
I don't remember what age I was when that obvious Santa-debunking clue in the form of my exhausted father went flying over my head. Truthfully, I'm a little ashamed to try and figure it out at the moment. I will say that I remember sometime later arguing with fellow students that Santa was real. I was in the fourth grade.
I know my father loved me in spite of myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if that morning, just for a few moments, he thought I was a complete asshole.
Though he's no longer with us, I feel my father and I shared the same frustrations regarding certain attitudes. Like him, my strength is in my ability to work. I'm less of a thinker than he was, but the amount of effort I put in and what I've accomplished on any given day is pretty clearly defined, if only to me. I have difficulty tolerating anyone young and naive that refuses to see the amount of work adults have to do to keep everything going.
Young people (and I speak from experience) have a hard time coping with the time and effort it takes to accomplish anything of note. I don't think this is a new phenom, but it is something evident in the young people of modern society who don't have to work the coal mines at age twelve. Children--and sometimes teenagers, and sometimes even young adults--can't deal with all that work. They view it as impossible and something only an adult can accomplish though mysterious means.
If a young person accomplishes something, they regard it as grueling and consuming of all their time. If an adult does something for them, it's magic.
I don't begrudge the young for this mindset (I more begrudge my younger, stupider self). Young people eventually learn by sink-or-swim methods nowadays and hopefully grow into responsible adults. What concerns me is that in this day of specializations and technology, there are more and more adults from various generations unwilling to learn or understand how things work around them if it's not their job to learn it. It's almost as if the technological world, and just the world of knowing or wanting to figure out how things work, have become a kind of magic to them.
Think about it the next time you volunteer to look at a copier with a paper jam, or a printer that has a weird error message coming up, or a program on a colleague's PC that isn't working in a textbook fashion. You're not an expert. You never even attended that laughable orientation session. But you've finagled devices like this before. And will you look at that, you got your hands dirty and the doohickey works again!
Now go to your boss, your peer, whomever. Tell them you fixed it and explain how. Then take in the million mile blank stare they will in all likelihood give you.
You could be speaking in what is both your native tongue in the simplest words possible, maybe even slowing your words down a bit ("IIIIII, turrrrrrnnnned iiit offffffffffff thennnnnnnnnnn ooooooonnnnnnnn agaiinnnnnnnnnnn"). They will still look at you like you're using a made up language found in a H.P. Lovecraft story.
I think about these people who seem to take pride in being dumbfounded. I've come to the conclusion that their ancestors must have been the type to burn accused witches.
After all, if they couldn't figure something out, it had to be witchcraft.
A few centuries back, they would be burning me for teaching their children to read.
That can't happen today, but give it another generation.
Work. Magic. They can be scary stuff.
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