An Open Letter To Parents

You have done fine. You have lived and have received the graces of this world as anyone else would have. Your actions have spoken, and they have been either accepted or defied by your children, but nonetheless you have shaped, determined, guided the life of your child. We, as children, are you. We have been blank canvases which you have painted upon, in collaboration with living artists we encounter every day. I accept your rule, your ideas, your mistakes, your successes with open arms. I accept the continuous and unrelenting changes that you have catalyzed in me. I would not be me without you. Surely I can disagree with you, but that dissatisfaction with your rule is only available to me because you have instilled, somewhere in the vast history of my being, moments which are not even recognizable any more, my rebellion against you. You are individual, human, and so to fight your being, rather to act without recognizing the long term effects every moment we as children share with you, would be destructive. But! Even if we do fight, disobey, disagree, act without thought, you are still molding us into the beings we are.
Though, considering that you have this great effect on us, I would suggest that you consider your actions to a greater degree, especially at this point in our lives, when we are exploring independence. We, as teenagers, are changing course, becoming or at least trying to become self sufficient and directed. We swim in murky waters with you, being able to do much of what is necessary in our lives by ourselves, but at the same time being dependent for shelter, food, and occasional help. This pond that we now swim in is new to both of us, but it does not seem to me that we act as if it is. We as people, are reactive, not proactive. Furthermore, we are reactive in the worst way, we judge another person's actions based on what we would have done. 

Your children are not you. They are of you but are not you.

So when your child, swimming in the cloudy waters of independence and self discovery, makes mistakes, I would suggest that your actions be carefully considered. One of the most dreaded words of a child from their parent is disappointment. We do not want, whether biologically or psychologically, to disappoint you, but we will. In our exploration of the world and ourselves we are going to make mistakes. We are going to continue making mistakes until we die, but you will not be here to punish us. The world will be. I am under the impression that besides the countless cases against this, in general things work out. People are good. We are good. We want to do good, for you, for ourselves, and even for humanity. At this point in our lives your words are as good as the rest, so your attempts to rear us are futile. If we are going to do wrong, we will be the only ones to correct it. Your punishments or praise, at this point, are only impediments to our nature. It no longer matters. While we fundamentally don't want to disappoint you, your disappointment becomes less and less potent as we grow older. The only power you have is that you are currently our guardians. It is your duty to consider our position in life, our state of being and mind, and while it is also your duty not to let us destroy ourselves, many of your actions for our self preservation in your world are now misguided. I can only hope to beseech to you the knowledge that our rebellion is not against YOU, it is against anyone who limits and controls the gateways to our independence, which at this point is you. All that is available to you at this point is the hope or knowledge that your years of raising us, when it did in fact matter, have instilled in us the ability to see right and wrong, to do good, to be good for ourselves and others. We are becoming adults, and it's a strange thing to witness.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2DUdsN_f5k
XoXo

Civiks.

Mankind is a unruly beast. Our actions allude to a great instability in our true nature. Are we good, or are we evil? Looking at a very recent event, the bombing of the Boston Marathon, it would be hard to say that we are good, but within the same devastating moments emerged heroes, men and women who sacrificed their own security to save people they didn't even know. The division between people's own perception of man's nature of good or evil is identifiable within our own media. What has been looked at? The devastation, the recklessness, the horror. Sure there are a few moments given to the heroes, but that doesn't sell as well as pain. Man isn't interested in his own saviors, but rather what could cause his demise. Consistently we are  drawn to discuss reasons for the bad as if there is a solution. It is a problem which is so unfathomable and unpreventable that it is rarely even considered. Man commits evil because there exists evil in all men . As is said about the Lutheran Church's belief in man's nature "You're born a sinner. You live a sinner. You die a sinner." The only solution to this fundamental nature of man, is to outline rules. The ten commandments bring forth proclamations telling God's people what they should and should not do. As the creators of the bible saw, and we see today, man needs to be told what to do. In the pre-school classroom, in high school, in adulthood, there exists overarching ideas of what one is supposed to do.  While our existence is completely individual, it has been thousands of years since man has lived completely on his own. Community is the way of life for us, and because of this we must lay down the law. Disobeying the ten commandments lead to death in biblical times, and I am glad to say that we have moved beyond killing for adultery. We have now, in  more intellectually understanding times, laid rules for which we should abide by just because it is for the betterment of all of us. Does this mean that there now exists a sense of community in every individual? No, but we have acknowledged, at least in this nation and other modern nations, the independence of our beings.  As with the bible we can punish, not by death of course, hurting one another, but no longer can we impose upon someone that they must be proactive in the betterment of their community. Civics is an illumination. An illumination of the way in which we should live with one another. Created over long periods of time, cultural and sociological changes, each community has created undocumented rules that provide a guideline to which every citizen can follow and better his community. Voting, for example, is a considered a civic duty. Citizens of the U.S.A do not need to vote, and there is no punishment if one does not, but voting is participation within our community. It empowers the citizen, giving them a say in the governing of themselves and their fellow man, and because of this participation it is beneficial. Civic duties exist within every community one exists, down to a Chicago block; keeping one's lawn clean and nice is beneficial to all that live on the block. Civics are a guideline for man, a lost and unruly beast. As humanitarians believe there exists good in all of us, it is just that we must tell ourselves how to be good to one another.