Katie Wells
Take a minute and pretend you’re in the woods. You start out confident, trusting in your capability to take an axe to a tree trunk or whatever you’re supposed to do to make a home for yourself. But, immediately after you enter the maze, your axe breaks, and the wood splinters to tiny bits in your hands. You didn’t buy the right one. But, it’s too late to go back now. You press forward, and your hand hurts, and if only you had packed some tweezers or something. Maybe you can use a rock as a knife–people do that, don’t they? To your right and left, you see others forging ahead without a pause. Your subpar mediocrity hits you in the chest and somehow you’re angry at everything all at once. Yourself–for being entirely too underwhelming. Your school–for failing to instruct you on the best tools to acquire, or any necessary skills you might need if you’re going to be self-sufficient. The people around you–for somehow managing to complete with ease what you’re struggling to do.
Fast forward a while. You’re sitting on the forest floor, you have gathered nothing, and your hand hurts. You can hear barking in the distance. You have no food or shelter, and it’s getting dark. A presence looms over you, and you whip around.
It’s this old guy, and he’s got a backpack on that rivals the size of your torso. He’s staring at you.
“What do you want?” You sound like a blubbering idiot.
“C’mere.” He holds a hand out and lifts you to your feet. The tightness in your chest eases.
That first part is kind of what being a new adult feels like, and for some reason, all of us young adults are under the belief that no one else has ever felt this way. We’re lost and afraid and hurting.
We need someone to take the time to listen to us and give us feedback that’s based in God, in Truth, and in wisdom from having gone before. We need mentors. As is, at times we end up spitting useless phrases back and forth at each other.
“Oh, you’re hurt? That’s terrible. You know, there are trees here.”
“Thank you, Kelsey, that’s so helpful. Sometimes I forget about the trees.”
“No problem. I feel like the trees are important to what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“I agree.”
My intention in my teasing is not to undermine young people giving each other advice. When you’re hurting, the comfort of a friendly conversation can go a long way. But, if all of a young person’s advice comes from their fellow youth, they’re not going to have as deep of a pool of knowledge and experience to draw from. If someone older can come along and show us how to actually cut the trees, can give us a map of all the tiger pits, we’re going to end up in a better position come nightfall.
And yes. We’re afraid of your judgement. We’re terrified that you’re going to peek at the mess of sticks and inedible berries that we’ve spent hours gathering, only to laugh in our faces and lecture us on how we got ourselves into this position rather than show us how to make it better.
I guess that’s kind of prideful, because we probably deserve to be lectured. But, judgement alone feels like you’re thrusting a napkin across the table when what we really need is the actual food. Both food and napkins are helpful, both are necessary. But, everyone knows that the person who only brings napkins to the potluck is probably the least invested. Invest in us.
We need you to love us.
Mark Wilson
I’m sixty-two, but I have discovered that I need to be around young people. The young give me eyes to see again the wonder of the world. Every grandparent has had the joy of watching a grandchild discover ice-cream for the first time. Or perhaps see their first elephant. No matter how familiar I am with a story or poem, when I teach it I see it with new eyes because I see it through the eyes of my students. The young inoculate me against a common ailment of the old: contempt for the familiar. Too easily the old assume a “been there, done that” boredom with life. It is true that foolishness as well as hope spring eternal in the young—but I love the spring.
Unfortunately, our culture has institutionalized segregation by age. Obviously our schools are far beyond the one-room school house where the children of different ages mixed. Most homes are not inter-generational these days either; grandparents are people we visit. American mobility separates us from our extended families and other generations. Churches, especially the large ones, often provide children’s church and youth ministries so that the young and old seldom worship together. Rather than challenging the development of the distinct youth culture in America, many evangelical churches tried to ride the wave by hiring youth pastors. I could multiply examples, but the result has been the young and old often live in different worlds and fail to connect. We need each other.
I need the young to save me from myself. In our culture, these years nearing retirement with an empty nest are supposed to be when my wife and I finally get to focus on ourselves. But that is deadly. On the way to work I drive past a casino whose parking lot is filled with the RV’s of retirees who make a circuit through the state from one casino to the next. This is an extreme expression of the kind of spiritual death that comes from a retirement centered on ourselves. Teaching young people, working in Vacation Bible School, and just showing interest in the lives of young people saves us by drawing us out of ourselves and challenging us to invest in a generation that will endure beyond us.
Most importantly, serving and giving to the young rescues old hearts from emptiness. Both the old who live to achieve their dreams and those who have had them dashed can be attacked by the numbing emptiness of loss and regret. The fresh dreams and passions of the young are a tonic for the soul. Nourishing the dreams of the young can infuse our lifetime of experiences and insight with value and utility.
Listening to young people teaches me much about what truths and values are timeless. Yes, I said listening. This means shelving old geezer Rant #57, and letting a young person explain how it’s not possible for us to understand what it is like to be in love, depressed, unpopular, or the wonderfully unique person they are. But when we listen carefully, we discover the things that matter to them have always been a human concern. We feel less alone, and if we listen well, make them less alone too. No matter how fads and technologies change our world, communication with the young reveals how little the human heart has changed. If we listen, we discover their world is still ours.
