You who are on the road Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.
Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
As a teenager, anytime mom and I would have a knock down, drag out fight over any matters of cultural evolution or generation gap stuff - important stuff too, like having the FREEDOM to grow one's hair long - I would eventually get round to playing this song, just a bit too loud, and after ensuring that she had indeed won the argument, mummy would laugh.
I look around at the youth of today, with a postgrad daughter and a son in college, and I wonder. When I was a teen, the issues seemed clear. We were against war and for peace, we were for love and against hypocrisy, we distrusted the establishment and wanted to be allowed to learn from making our own mistakes, and we loved the music that spoke and felt of these issues.
And you, of tender years, Can't know the fears that your elders grew by, And so please help them with your youth, They seek the truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well, Their children's hell will slowly go by, And feed them on your dreams The one they picked, the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
("Teach Your Children" written by Graham Nash and performed by CSNY)
Avoidance of discussion seems preferable to fighting it out. The truth is a non-sequitur, and the activities of daily living have taken precedence over thought, belief, and principle, or perhaps we have lost the confidence to really believe in anything.
I would much rather that the youth do not follow in such nondescript footsteps.
While the amalgam of the strange ideas of the sixties-seventies may not provide answers for today's dilemmas, in many ways there are now much bigger challenges than any we faced 'back then'.
The paths that our youth choose to take, their beliefs, and their 'code of the road', will determine much for the future of what mankind is to become.
Choose wisely!
3 comments:
Hi there, stumbled accross your page while lookng for pictures of a praying skeleton.
read your top blog entry.
seems this journo agrees with you!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23092453-25192,00.html
Do you think that the youth are degrading or thinking in a nihilistic way? It almost seems like there is no actual position to take anymore. Almost like it is up to the individual person to weigh the pros and cons of a situation. Nice post!
Thanks Ben and Anxiously. I don't really think that the youth are in fact going backwards in any way. One of the challenges for older folks like me is to actually connect with the youth and find out what they actually are thinking.
My feeling is that there is a quiet forging of directions going on that is a bit 'under the surface' especially given that our PoMo culture produces so little that one can actually 'come to grips' with.
Much to mull... but I am quietly confident that being more human is one of the key ingredients that todays younger folks are aiming for.
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