In Rejection of Being Taken for For Granted: Take 2

In many ways the image above encapsulates my childhood and represents something unlikely to be seen in the current day. The parents of these children would have child protective services called on them in most places across the US. That or it would be nearly impossible to gather this many children at one time outside of school. In my childhood we roamed in packs. In summers, we were pushed outside early and told to return with the street lights. We took risks, climbed trees higher than we should, engineered bike ramps destined to fail, but it never truly seemed dangerous. I am no doubt glamorizing my childhood through some sentimental lens but there was something essential about the experience that I worry may be absent for young people now.

I think that my childhood allowed opportunities to cultivate independence and a degree of resilience. It forced me to deal with interpersonal conflict, sometimes poorly, without adult mediation. I had the opportunity to learn early that not everyone around me cares about my well being. It is a lesson best learned early with the lowest stakes possible. Most importantly, my childhood gave me the opportunity to be bored and to cultivate the imagination to make boredom an opportunity. Our society changes rapidly while we evolve slowly. The developmental needs for today’s young are the same as mine, the same as my parents and grandparents. It is worth wondering which changes make it more difficult to fulfill those needs without deliberation. For example, how does a child develop imagination without the silence from which those strange impulses grow? Where does that silence come from in the age of YouTube and TikTok? It speaks to what is called a growing mental health crisis among the young.

I started developing an idea for a book that keeps changing forms like a Pokemon. It started as a joke, and then became a serious exploration on gender for boys. Recognizing that gender is not a real thing unless you talk about it as if it is, I began to focus on the concept of identity and its misuse. In its final form the book is less an exploration of identity than advice to the young to help them grow towards healthy fulfilled adulthoods. What are the things they need to develop imagination, resilience and a connection to their community and what are some strategies. The project has always been crowd-sourced to some degree, but it has become central to the latest manifestation. I have started having conversations to seek that advice, and am exploring means of expanding those conversations. There are some experiences that are universal to healthy adults and I would like to cast the net as widely as possible to understand the diverse ways of explaining those central experiences.

This has impacted my writing here. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m figuring it out. I will be reaching out to you when I have refined the project and my approach enough to go forward fully. Until then, think about the advice you might offer.