Sunday, December 13, 2015

Young Adults... Great Models for Moving Literature

 This is the beautiful face of my favorite young adult. She lives near me, visiting when she can. Smart, suspicious, silly, sensitive, and strong... and that's just the S's. Of course I love her, who wouldn't? But I'm also, in the interest of full disclosure, her nana. My wife is her maternal grandmother.

But I'm not only impressed with who she is as a young adult, after all I've known the special person, "M", since she was born, and she was a freakin' awesome baby/toddler/big girl/pre-teen before. No, I'm also impressed by her group of friends, and so many like them around the world.

Young adults these days are rockin'. They embody many ideals, tempered with a world-weary acknowledgement of the commercialism of their learning environments. They know social media is self-serving, and have learned the hard way that many messages are commercials disguised as truth. Young adult these days, however, are savvy. They question, not just values, but power. They are demanding answers, and when those aren't forthcoming they dive headlong into research.

World-wide, nearly instant research. The world is much smaller than it's ever been before. With the proliferation of videos, kids are finding out that people are much more the same, than they are different.

Which is great, because the next older generation is getting that all wrong, accepting wide divides between people and being prodded into conflicts which settle nothing, but greatly stir dissatisfaction and inflame passions.

Personally - and remember you heard it here first, folks - I believe that a new '60's type revolution is on the brink of exploding. I think today's young adults are watching the posturing and posing of their elders, and are about to do what another group of young adults, who have been neatly categorized and dismissively labeled as 'hippies', did fifty years ago.

Their music tells stories of rebels, and vigilantes. The depths of despair are appearing in their art work across genres, as are the heights offered by hope. They are demanding better educations, and holding their educators to ever rising standards. They are remembering what so many of their elders have forgotten:

Love Conquers All.

Yep, young adults these days totally rock. "M" and her friends - here's to you! Go get 'em, kiddos.

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