COFFEE-SHOP KIDS…AND HOPE

By

Chuck Cascio

www.chuckwrites@yahoo.co

     Kids. All ages. They wander into the coffee shop daily after school. They meet sometimes to sip a beverage but often just to interact informally with one another. 

     Mostly, they laugh. They occasionally talk about a project--from school or something to do at home or an idea blossoming from their fertile imagination, the latter prompting infectious chatter among them.

     Yes, they are often loud, but their energy is inspiring. It provides me with some much-needed hope. Hope that the disruption our society is currently experiencing will be addressed by the youth of today in their own way. 

     Will that way be different from, say, the ways of previous generations?  Of course. Because that is how change occurs. That is why my music-loving parents had a hard time understanding the appeal of the raucous rock-and-roll of my youth as compared with the melodious songs of Sinatra and Dino and the opera arias that wafted throughout our home. They came to realize, perhaps reluctantly, that what they were hearing was not “wrong.” It was just what fit a new generation.

     After all, the appeal of what affects life morphs from one generation to the next. The coffee-shop kids look different from the kids of my youth, just as the long-haired males and mini-skirted females of my generation looked different from the "more appropriately" attired youths of my parents' generation. But that does not mean the kids of today are inherently “wrong.”

     The coffee-shop kids exhibit their intelligence and creativity without even being fully aware that they are doing so. 

     So what if they burst out laughing at some image on a mobile device that one of them shares with the others? 

     So what if they actually talk with their in-person group while simultaneously texting other friends who are elsewhere? 

     It is their energy, creative conversation, and commitment to one another in the informal, after-school, coffee-shop setting that impresses me. 

     But...why do I need hope? Why do I need to wish that what I am seeing is evidence of the reality in which they think...and love...and live? 

     I do not pretend to have answers to those questions, but there are restrictive elements that surround kids today that I find disturbing.  Sure, kids have to understand that there are limits to what is--and should be--considered acceptable. That has been true with every generation, but those things change over time. 

     There is harm in not just letting kids meet and interact and play…as kids. Those informal freedoms result in their own internal guidance and decisions that will lead our society in the future. Suppressing those freedoms will only suppress the creativity that leads to positive changes.

     If in today's world it takes a coffee shop to provide that free, creative environment, then, by all means, I welcome it. Bring on the coffee. Bring on the change. But bring it on freely by letting the coffee-shop kids be, and think, and create with some degree of trust and independence.

Reader response is always welcome. Send to chuckwrites@yahoo.com.

Copyright: Chuck Cascio; all rights reserved.

Has Hope Lost Its Perch?

    The direction in which we are headed has become more clear everyday. As a nation, we have to choose between a bloviating liar who is a convicted felon 34 times or an elderly, though productive, man who has difficulty articulating views he has developed during several decades of government service. We are also faced with a Supreme Court that is nothing more than a political lackey of the bloviating liar. And then there are the members of Congress who reiterate talking points without caring whether those points are based on lies or purposely misconstrued facts. 

     Nor can we avoid those hatred-spewing fakes in the "news media" who use purposely use language to fuel anger. And we never know if the angry person sitting next to us in the local coffee shop is carrying a loaded weapon. And we hear about how the minds of the youth of the country are rotting due to their reliance upon social media technology that continually distracts them. 

     So where do we look for hope? Where is the core of good...the capable...the caring...the people who can lead us to respect the nation of immigrants that we are, the "thing with feathers/that perches in the soul/and sings the tune without the words/and never stops at all" as Emily Dickinson described it?

      Don't tell me that it is through religion. There is far too much extremism in the name of religion to make it the core savior we need. Don't tell me that we simply need to shut down technology usage among young people; doing so would ignore the obvious--technology is not going away so we have to use it positively rather than destroy it. Don't tell me that it is by having confidence that our institutions will reform themselves, because the corruption and hatred that has, and will, infuse them makes them unreliable. 

    So where do we look? 

    Well, for me, a proud Boomer, the answer starts with looking inward. At ourselves. At the core beliefs upon which we were raised. By objectively questioning what we have learned and experienced as we have aged. And then to share as much as possible with the younger generations. Not those members who spew hatred--they have been compromised hopelessly. No...we need wherever and whenever possible to talk to the open-minded youth, the members of those generations who show respect for themselves, and for one another, and for the guidelines that have led them to be the people they are. 

     We all have grown up making mistakes, doing things we have regretted, and making commitments we believed could not be broken but have been broken. There are some in high-level political offices and businesses and religions who believe that they do not have to apologize, nor do they have to reconstruct themselves. Sadly, they are not the answer to reconstructing the core values that this country needs because they are the ones who have destroyed those values. 

     So we must look beyond them. 

     We must discover those of younger generations who can think broader than themselves. They are out there. They exist. They are of a different thought process than those of us of older generations. They have witnessed more hatred, more exclusion, more threats at a much earlier age than other generations. Many of us are too old to fully understand the source of those thought processes, but that does not mean that those people do not exist. They do. 

     We must find them. We must work with them. We must help them to see beyond themselves, beyond ethnicity, beyond levels of wealth, beyond technology, beyond vacuous hatred and directly into the everyday actions that are supposed to make this country exceptional. 

     Right now, we are not exceptional. Right now, we are in a dangerously transformative state. Right now, we must do whatever little--or large--things we can do to make the transformation a positive experience for all. To find that “thing with feathers” and to not let it disappear.

Copyright: Chuck Cascio, all rights reserved.

Opinion? Send to chuckwrites@yahoo.com