So my friend Megan and I were talking over hot chocolate and Daphne's tonight. One of the things that we ended up talking about was the idea of change. It's a long story about how we got there but in a nutshell, we were talking about how brutal junior high was. If you weren't in the cool crowd, your life could sometimes be miserable. If you weren't one of those kids who wore the right clothes and knew the right people and did the right things after school, forget being popular. And for those of us who were on the outside, we had such a fascination for those girls in the cool crowd. Even though you knew that your smarts and your brain would take you so much further in life, there was still this obsession, as Megan said, with those girls. And it wasn't as if they were nice.... even if you were on their side and you pissed them off or did something, they would give you up in a second. Presby and I were also talking about that today. A student got arrested at our school today and they knew it was him because his seven friends gave him up. They were all asked to write down on a piece of paper who did it and they all wrote down "It was John" except for John who wrote "It wasn't me." He told me that in junior high, it's every man for himself, you look out for yourself and there's is absolutely no loyalty. He paired this with a story from the high school where he sat with some high schoolers at lunch every day for a month trying to get them to tell him who stole a dictionary from a teacher's classroom and they just wouldn't budge and wouldn't give each other up.
In high school, this obsession just seemed to get worse. In a way you longed to be a part of the cool crowd but on the other hand, you really didn't want to be friends with them because they were mean and they drank and they talked behind peoples backs. Yet we knew every single detail about their lives. I know for me, I would always be really quiet around them, especially in class. They would use me to ask for help and then forget about me and talk about their inner social life and I, being the awed person I was, would just sit quietly and listen. I knew all the details of their inner circle and really, as much as part of me wanted to be a part of them, the other part knew that I would be miserable.
Fast forward now to college and post-college. All these people are still friends! And here's is where the Change is Good phrase comes into play. I'm not saying there's anything bad about being friends with people from high school. Heck, I still am friends with friends from my high school. But I've also branched out. I've grown. I've found out who I am. I've found what makes me happy. I'm totally and completely happy spending more than six hours a day with 150 squirmy, ADD, hyperactive, sometimes unmotivated kids. I love and adore the friends that I've kept from high school. They were an integral part in helping me find out who I am. But I've also made new friends. The friends that I've made in college and beyond far outnumber the friends I had in high school (and I am not that popular). I look at the people in that cool crowd in high school and junior high and I know that they're always going to have each other. But I wonder if they're going to be happy. I wonder if they've been caught up in this same social circle for so long that they don't know how to get out. I don't think they realize that change is good. Moving on is good. Meeting new people and making new friends and having new experiences is good. Being exclusive for the rest of your life is not going to get you anywhere. Part of me wonders if in twenty years, they're going to be looking back at their life and wondering where it all went wrong....
I'm not entirely sure where exactly I was heading with this when I started writing. In general, Megan and I had a really great conversation about the idea that changing is good and it was really great to talk and share with someone who was kind of there in the same place as I was, in a totally different school. It definitely made me think about my kids later when I got home and I hope for all of them that they can take those steps out of their comfort level, that they should strive to push the boundaries of their confinements. Overall, I want them to know that sixth period history class in seventh grade is not the rest of their life, junior high is not the rest of their life, college is not the rest of their life, it's just the steps that are being taken on this long road that we do call life. I want them to be able to lookg back at their life one day and be proud of how they lived, be proud of what they accomplished and most importantly, be proud of the changes that they saw over the years.
In high school, this obsession just seemed to get worse. In a way you longed to be a part of the cool crowd but on the other hand, you really didn't want to be friends with them because they were mean and they drank and they talked behind peoples backs. Yet we knew every single detail about their lives. I know for me, I would always be really quiet around them, especially in class. They would use me to ask for help and then forget about me and talk about their inner social life and I, being the awed person I was, would just sit quietly and listen. I knew all the details of their inner circle and really, as much as part of me wanted to be a part of them, the other part knew that I would be miserable.
Fast forward now to college and post-college. All these people are still friends! And here's is where the Change is Good phrase comes into play. I'm not saying there's anything bad about being friends with people from high school. Heck, I still am friends with friends from my high school. But I've also branched out. I've grown. I've found out who I am. I've found what makes me happy. I'm totally and completely happy spending more than six hours a day with 150 squirmy, ADD, hyperactive, sometimes unmotivated kids. I love and adore the friends that I've kept from high school. They were an integral part in helping me find out who I am. But I've also made new friends. The friends that I've made in college and beyond far outnumber the friends I had in high school (and I am not that popular). I look at the people in that cool crowd in high school and junior high and I know that they're always going to have each other. But I wonder if they're going to be happy. I wonder if they've been caught up in this same social circle for so long that they don't know how to get out. I don't think they realize that change is good. Moving on is good. Meeting new people and making new friends and having new experiences is good. Being exclusive for the rest of your life is not going to get you anywhere. Part of me wonders if in twenty years, they're going to be looking back at their life and wondering where it all went wrong....
I'm not entirely sure where exactly I was heading with this when I started writing. In general, Megan and I had a really great conversation about the idea that changing is good and it was really great to talk and share with someone who was kind of there in the same place as I was, in a totally different school. It definitely made me think about my kids later when I got home and I hope for all of them that they can take those steps out of their comfort level, that they should strive to push the boundaries of their confinements. Overall, I want them to know that sixth period history class in seventh grade is not the rest of their life, junior high is not the rest of their life, college is not the rest of their life, it's just the steps that are being taken on this long road that we do call life. I want them to be able to lookg back at their life one day and be proud of how they lived, be proud of what they accomplished and most importantly, be proud of the changes that they saw over the years.
No comments:
Post a Comment