Oblivious

I'm noticing a pattern. Young people are oblivious. And I mean totally, utterly and incredibly oblivious. We think we are grown, we think we know it all. We think we are so wise and experienced because of what we have gone through in our 19, 20 or 21 years of life. We live for jumping on the first chance to criticize one another as if we have the right to do so. We love conflict (though most will deny it), we live for trivialities. We set expectations for our friends as if they are nothing more to us than amusement, or a means to boost our self worth.

Instead of taking the time to understand and respect the feelings and view points of others in our lives, we act as if they owe us something. As if one should have to earn the friendship of another. This is not truly friendship, this is an organized clique in which each strives to increase their own self worth by creating envy in others through exclusion and rejection. We measure our self worth not by our personal character, but by the acceptability of the image we present to the world. We hurt each other in the name of being "real" and "honest", when we should be patient and kind to one another. Instead of forgiving we slander each others name and claim to be the 'bigger person'.

We concentrate on being different and interesting instead of ourselves and call that being "real". We rebel by doing and wearing and listening to just what other rebellious are and claim to be unique, then down talk others who are interested in anything 'mainstream'. We avoid the company of those who we judge to be not like us (because remember, we are the best kind of people and all others are strange) and yet claim that we want to go into the world and help people. We see each other through the sunglasses of our own concepts of iniquity and write off those who do not measure up to our idea of a person worth knowing.

We think that 'telling someone off' makes us a strong person. If someone agrees with us even in attempt to diffuse our aggressiveness, we think they are weak. If someone adopts any our beliefs or interests, we consider them to be weak minded even though we preach to them that they are wrong.

We are fake. We are unkind. We are cold. We are self centered. We are oblivious, and most of us continue on thinking we know it all. We will never learn from one another because we ignore each other.

We should practice kindness, patience, forgiveness, and humility more often. We should find a way to truly care about another before we decide that we are worth knowing.

Don't fool yourself.