Man-Child

This is hard to put into words, but it is a belief I have come to have after years of interactions with younger adults.  We meet regularly in what is in essence a half hour long confrontation.

 

When I talk to younger men, because I mostly deal with men, there is a timidity, a lack of self confidence and a lack of focus that is very different from what I saw among my contemporaries growing up in the 1960s. Adrift, with a lack of focus and an attitude of what does it matter, they bounce from one parent’s home to a friend’s couch to the other parent’s home/

 

Repeatedly I see cases where these young men who should be on a college track but are just lost.  They have taken seven years to get a degree that I rushed through and obtained in 3 ½.  They are tentative about everything.  There is no raging desire to be separate from their parents, to be different and better than the generation that came before.  I can’t think of a single guy I grew up with who didn’t have a relatively concrete plan on what would happened when they finished high school.

 

These men-children are all shaking shoulders and I don’t knows.  Where is the ambition?  Where is the desire to succeed?  Where is the longing for a championship, a scholarship, a place on the Dean’s list?

 

Did we do this to them?  Did screens do this to them.  Did a culture of participation medals do this to them?  I just don’t get it.