Worzel's World- An apology to the expectant generation

These days it’s not often that I eat humble pie. I have a mate though that reckons he ate so much as a young man he developed a taste for it. It is undoubtedly a variety of health food and for complete mental health should be consumed regularly.

It is as a result of eating this bitter feast that I must tender a sincere and heartfelt apology to the younger generation. If you think we have failed you then you are quite right. If you think that life is not fair and that you have been picked on it is because life never seems fair and if people can pick on you, they will.

I wouldn’t be young again for quids, not that anyone is offering. Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoyed my young years and back then there were many older persons who told me often and at length that I was enjoying it far more than was considered acceptable at the time. Most of these people are now dead.

I had a chat over lunch with a friend’s daughter. She is intelligent, pretty, and vivacious – chock full of the enthusiasm endemic to naive bullet-proof youth. The world is her oyster, her future so bright she prefers not to look too hard at it for fear of being dazzled.

As a middle-aged curmudgeon who hoards his cynicism like a miser hoards gold, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. I know that the passage of years will bring her heartbreak and disappointment. Pain and suffering are life’s great teachers and she will not be spared the lesson. It is indisputably true but hard learned that if you have no expectations then you cannot be disappointed. I have tagged her and her peers the expectant generation. They have been duped into having high expectations and are consequently destined for great disappointment.

Where once young urchins walked the streets to school, today they are chauffeured. Where once sporting endeavour was about winning, it is now about taking part. Utter rubbish of course – if sport is not about doing your utmost to win it is sport no longer and merely a pastime. 

My own mother was a hot-tempered woman who in times of passion common to all mothers and sons would apply a quick right hand to my head. Learning to ride and dodge these blows stood me in good stead in schoolyard and street where fisticuffs were not uncommon and my antagonists less fearsome than my mother. I loved my mother no less for these occasional attacks. Others that bashed or fought me didn’t cook me dinner. 

As children we climbed trees and sometimes fell out. We also found many other ways of damaging ourselves and others. Yet I have no memory of ever running home in tears. Marks from a caning or a fat lip from a fight were hidden for fear of having to explain what happened and thereby risking a mother’s disgust – a far harsher punishment than stick, stone or fist can deliver. 

In stark contrast with those of this expectant generation, my own parents and the parents of my peers were more concerned about how we behaved towards others rather than how others behaved towards us. This was a reasonable concern. Children are by nature mean and merciless savages. 

 In the school yards of my childhood as I expect it was for my parents and all parents before them, name-calling and insult was an almost daily occurrence. Of course we had no cell phones so these were exchanged face-to-face and there was always the option of responding physically. In a practical sense though this was nigh on impossible, as it would have resulted in constant fighting all and every day. Mostly we just learned to live with and even to laugh at it.

I am therefore unable to understand the concern over a recent phenomenon called text bullying. Apparently the government are considering passing a law against it. I suppose they may as well. They have passed laws against practically everything else. But that this can and is blamed for the suicide of many young people is preposterous. We had real bullies in my day who actually hit you. None of us were moved to commit suicide because of it. 

There will always be bullies. There are still those who try and bully me today. These though mostly consist of government departments. When counsellors or politicians say it’s nobody’s fault or that it is the fault of the bully they are wrong. It is the fault of parents and members of preceding generations.

 So, I am prepared to apologise on behalf of my peers. I am sorry that we made your lives too easy. Sorry that we treated you without passion, that we did not love you enough to slap you when you made us angry, whether you deserved it or not. That we did not make you work hard enough to strengthen your character, that we gave you a ’safe’ world that taught you nothing and failed to equip you for the challenges that now and in the future will confront you. 

And I am sorry mostly that we gave you false expectations.

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