Honesty

Honesty is not what anybody's about anymore, they're about being plugged into their i-device into they way into to work, sitting at their desk, mindlessly, shuffling TPS reports for the next eight or so hours so they can get plugged back in on their way home, snarl at their family until everyone's settled in front of whatever tube feeds their emptied minds mindless drivel so they can fall asleep and do that all over again for the rest of their lives until they die.

Nobody wants to hear honesty anymore, unless it's about Kayne West or Kim Karashdan.

Is it a bad thing that I have no Idea who these people are?

According to the world, yes, yes, it is. I have no idea what's in the news, the status of dead people on a plane or boat or storm nor who stabbed whom in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Connecticut or who raped whom, 'whom' who showed up a party, underaged, without her parents' permission, drank quite a bit and was she chaperoned? No. Was the party supervised? No. So, teens with drugs and alcohol, but we know our Johnny's going to be on his best behavior because we've been there the whole time, raising him rightly.

I have no idea of any of this going on, every day, some of it making the news, most of it not, just showing up on facebook and instagram, two more media outlets I do not frequent like our 'well-connected society' now does more than they interact with their spouses and children.

I wish I could introduce everyone the power and beauty of being able to create. Create what? 'Content'? No. Beauty. Art. You see, I'm well-connected. I come from a family of writers and teachers and poets and I married into a family of artists. You, dear reader, are probably well-connected, too, being a writer yourself, or artist.

Unlike most people. Most people? Are they content-producers? No, they are simply consumers, and their benefit to themselves, their family, and others is ... what?

What are you here for? Really?

Teens get it. Don't they? That's why they party so hard, drinking until they're numb and then killing themselves more and more frequently these days. Teens know that their lives are pointless, and they are totally useless.

And we wonder why we're losing this next generation to sex, drugs and whatever they call rock and roll these days? This is not the griping of an old, bitter man, this is my plea from me to you.

What is your purpose? Is your purpose that? To commute, then to work, then to snarl then to vege? Are you giving your children purpose? What do they have to live for? Why should they be morally upright? Your purpose is them, right? That they have it better, and live happily.

But what purpose are you give them? 'Father, give me a quest, ... a noble quest.'

Who can give their child a noble quest? Can you? And how can you give them a noble purpose if you have none?

You're purpose is them? Okay, but what role model are you? They become what you are now. Do you want them nice, safe and secure in a 9-to-5er, working for the Man, for the rest of their lives until they die, leaving their 'survived-by' family members a mountain of debt and a mess of unfinished tasked and stories never told? What noble purpose are you giving your children? What can they create? What legacy can they leave, so that two hundred years later people will say 'Grace Hopper' 'Rosa Parks' ... and your daughter. Or, 'George Washington,' 'John Adams' (arguably our most passionate and thoughtful and caring Founding Father) ... and your son.

Wow. Okay! I know where this all came from: people being 'taught' in schools what? Nothing but rote memorization, and we're all paying for that, every day we rotely go to our jobs and turn right around and go to work, because that's how we're defined now.

We need to get back to basics. We need to redefine what it is to be a person, a citizen, and we need to reconstrain what others tell us, particularly when they're telling us how to think and be and live.