I look around my country and I can't help but worry. The dollar is falling at the speed of gravity, gas prices are rising to astronomical levels, our boys are fighting a war I don't support, and all we can do as a society is watch reality TV, continue accruing debt and bickering because that T-Shirt at Bloomingdale's doesn't come in cornflower blue. Every generation is a little softer than the previous, and expects a little more without earning or doing. My own children have a cow when I make them walk a few blocks.
I look back to World War II and the Great Depression -- okay, I look back to the stories of history, not my own memories -- and I see a generation that was willing to do more with less. Here's my point... suffering builds character. We need to experience a little discomfort in order to understand what it's like to go without... in order to appreciate what we have... in order to realize that all of our physical possessions don't bring happiness or success.
Yeah, this is a disjointed ramble.
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3 comments:
I don't really agree that suffering builds character, I just think people naturally see their own position as the 'normal baseline'.
If you normally have to walk everywhere, having enough money for the bus is a luxury. If you're used to driving everywhere, taking the bus is a huge pain in the ass.
In a sense that means 'suffering builds character'...but you can talk about 'kids today having it easy'...but my parents said the same about me, their parents said the same about them and so on.
I think we did have it easy compared to our parents, who had it better than our grandparents, etc. That doesn't undermine my position. If kids don't suffer, how do they learn to appreciate what they've got?
Well...my point is that in another generation your kids could be writing exactly that same post about their kids.
My parents thought I didn't appreciate what I had when the TV only had four channels, I used a commodore 64 to write school papers and had access to a cordless (cordless, not cellular) phone.
In other words, I say kids today have it easy because when I was at school there was no such thing as the internet and I had to write school assignments with pen and paper.
When your kids become parents they'll probably say that kids have it easy because they have, I dunno, self-driving solar powered cars.
I agree with your point, but my point is that each generation DEFINES what 'suffering' is. Whether you have it 'easy' or not is purely a matter of perspective.
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