Old, old age.

Oops. Maybe I was wrong and we are going to live forever...or at least, maybe you are.

Life in the Age of Old, Old Age

Dare to fail

So much is being said, written, bemused about the distorted sense of potential today's young people have. I think of it as the idealized self on a rampage with the teen psyche. A lot of what's out there on this topic is right on. Kids today think they can be anything, do anything they want to do. And it's not simply a phenomenon of rich kids with over-indulgent parents, unlike the assertion in American Coddle, a great recent article in the NY Observer. From what I can tell, it's also common among kids who have absolutely no reason to think they'll do well in life. Lost teens I know living in shelters and detention centers also think they will be basketball stars, lawyers, doctors, rapper millionaires, and famous actors.

While reading I would have been snickering and adding aloud "damn right" in several places had I not seen so much of myself in that unfortunate cultural observation. See, I also believe I'm going to write a song that sells an album platinum, write a best-selling first novel and take the Nobel prize for my work with young people. Why do I think these things? Well, because my mom told me I could.

Is that really such a terrible thing to believe? Because I love my mom so, (and she really was a good mom), my heart tells me no. But there are things about being raised with the "I can do anything" mindset that really are dangerous.

As I get older, I now think the innate belief that one is capable of anything creates a grandiose, inflated sense of individual potential that ultimately becomes a frightening, interfering burden. What if we actually set out to do something fantastic and then. . . fail? When I personally can't do something I become despondent - utterly depressed. So given my personal experience, I wonder how much that failure represents death to one's idealized self. A kind of spiritual suicide.

Maybe if we'd simply set out to write a good song, we'd be happy with our achievements even if no one else was. But if we're taught to believe we can seriously do anything, (anything!!!), the liklihood that we will fail is very great, and so is the fear. We get tripped up, protecting our fragile, distorted sense of who we think we should be.

Unfortunately, I think that in our society we still need that idealized self - or that unreal image of oneself that is all good. It serves to counterbalance that other fantasy, the low, unworthy self that was the doom handed to us by too much religious dogma. When 60 minutes features a story about religious fundamentalists and even our president is about the rapture, it's little wonder that many of us who are less inclined towards that particular brand of open fantasy are determined to get our fix on earth.

Although ultimately modern humans probably should develop and accept a realistic sense of self that has both good and bad qualities, and whose defining characteristics come from the self, not others' expectations. But in our subconscious, I think most of us still live with these caricatures of ourselves as all that.

So then we exist in a perpetual, tenuous balance between two unreal poles of self-reference. And rather than risk tipping the balance with actions that encourage growth and risk failure, we bide our time and cling to our adolescent fantasies.

That's really not a good thing, because the single gray hairs, wrinkles and darkly circled eyes peering back at us from the mirror are telling us something. Time is giving us away. We are not teens any longer with our futures some long dark road ahead of us. We are in our individual futures. Each day our potential diminishes by the sheer fact that our time left here diminishes.

So why not write the good enough tune or just amuse your kids with a silly story? Who knows where that sustained practice of doing could lead. Dare to fail!