Do bands play in warehouses and open fields any more? Have they moved on to the stadiums and amphitheatres, away from makeshift stages?  Is it fun any more to go to a concert?

Do we meet our friends at the neighbourhood park, or the greenspace just around the corner?

Do we read books, watch movies, and drink coffee with a cigarette or beer in hand?  Do we remember to eat breakfast?  Have we changed?  Instead of running around for no reason at all–with our friends running after us–chasing us because it is fun–we push ourselves into fitness clubs to be on a treadmill for an hour.

We drool for a great armchair–not to be able to jump high on it–but to sink deep into it and forget we are awake and even alive as we get lost in TV’s imaginary world.  If the winners win, we win.

Are we more lost, now, or when we start making different decisions than we used to?  Where are we going?  Or, have we stopped ourselves from going anywhere?  Do we wait in order to be closer cousins with death or are we too afraid to move, as if we were to move, we travel close to the grave?

We think our children know so much more than we did at their age, and we run just to stay ahead of them.  It is so much easier to break the rules in this world–we have hope, and, we fear the ease of a gun or of a few dollars.

We made decisions, often with limits, and all children need today, is a password.  When in the past, we would steal $20 from mom’s purse, children can drops hundreds with an account, on any site in this day.

There are things I look at, like inflation, and it makes me feel that I have accomplished more than my parents have.  I look at the degree I have from college, and it makes me feel the world recognizes me as one of those geniuses that needs to paid slightly more than everyone else.  I look at the jobs my grandparents and, even, my parents have had, and I think that growing knowledge base and the growing brains of human beings are leading to more good things.  No, I do not believe that we will become extinct….  We have too many brains for that!

What is alarming, is that what I saw happen to me, is continuing to happen with my children.  They are smarter at a younger age.  They have more decision-making power….  They see when there is obviously a question or even a contention over an issue that they rightly can make a decision for themselves!  The most common one that happens, is where they start bargaining for “something extra”:  an extra hour up before bed?,  one more hour on the computer?, if they clean up their room today, can we make a trip to McDonald’s this weekend?  Where does a five-year-old start to learn how to bargain like criminal negotiators?  … But it is happening!!

I am looking forward to my children growing up.  They are beautiful and wonderful.  They are a great gift, and I am glad that I can’t return them.  Life is never turning stale, and life is sometimes hard and difficult, but I am not willing to give up, because of change, or because I am not brave enough to live it.  I promise, to live it!