Let’s set things straight!
A fact: I’m going through the second half of my life, over 40. Now I’m on the “decline”, getting older. I have more health issues, I cannot enjoy alcohol as I used to… and I fuckin’ love it. It’s liberating!
I still try to learn, expand my mind and thoughts, but as I grow older I feel it in my bones. It’s time for me to play the “support” role. Right now, I am MOSTLY “building” to support my family and mostly my kiddo. For HIS future.
The truth hits hard…
Every time I hear about something “new”, an idea, a perspective or anything else, I feel it inside me. This urge to resist this novel idea. Like a fear that feeds on what is already familliar to me, what I already believe or my current understanding of the world, based on the filters of my own upbringing, my complexes and family issues, my lack of knowledge on a subject, my fears and most importantly, that of dying. Because I know that this day will eventually come, and the later it comes, the more privileged and thankful I will be.
For this reason, I know that if I do not think critically about an issue that makes me feel uncomfortable, my own biases and fears will take over. I also see it in other grown-ups. We fear the future changing in ways we do not understand, because we forgot how to use our imagination and hope. We forgot to imagine a better future; we can only think of a comfortable and “user friendly” future. And, I hate it!
For us 40+
I have only one thing to say:
So if you are not under 40, SHUT the FUCK UP.
The future is NOT for you or for me, it’s for them!
We should STOP trying to impose our decisions upon the future of young people, with our status or power (capital, political or other). Our role is to support, guide and teach. If the next generations decline our teaching, it’s their future to mess up. You and I will be long dead by then, either way.
Especially for the men over 40+. Stop the fuck trying to hit on young women, trying to earn more money and prove whatever you are not and fill a gap that was never filled. Yes, our previous generation fucked us in other ways, so my suggestion is simple: “stop trying to fuck the next gen too.”. How about that?
Unpopular, very controversial and dangerous opinion:
I would argue that, people over a certain age should also lose their ability to vote.
Just like they stop driving cars after a certain age. The same reason teenagers cannot vote before a certain age. It’s time to put the young ones in the driving seat, because their road is their own now. Our part as we grow older is to support, guide and teach, to the best of our abilities and if they have a different opinion… you know. Just shut the fuck up. It is their future and their mistakes, not ours.
For the youth (16-25 y.o. and beyond!)
If you belong to the next generation,
do not stop imagining a better future, bro.
Read books, listen to music, play amazing story-telling games, dance, drink and even do drugs (just be aware!). Try to explore the world and push the boundaries of existence as much as you can, and as safely as possible.
Always ask yourself, “How will your life be in five or ten years?”. Your predictions will be TOTALLY off, but that’s the great thing about life. You gotta make the journey!
- Never stop trying and engaging with new things.
- Create groups and friendships.
- Open your mind and NEVER listen to what is possible to achieve and what is not.
No, we have not reached the end of history, and this is NOT the pinnacle of culture. Everything changes, and everything continues. Everything flows in time. A better future is yet to come, until the youth chooses it to be.
Most of us 40+ have already lost the ability to imagine. They haven’t!
Words from Wiser Individuals
Devouring the flesh of the young
I remember again a video of Giannis Bezos reciting the last letter Dimitris Liantinis wrote to his daughter. He puts it in far more eloquent terms than I ever could — the exact thing I’ve been chewing on these past few months.
…Remember that harsh times are coming for the younger generations. And it is unfair, a great strangeness, that such a gift of life is given to people — and most of them live inside the dizziness of this absurd joke. My final act carries the meaning of protest against the evil that we, the adults, are preparing for the innocent younger generations to come. We live our lives devouring their flesh. An evil, abysmal in its horror. My sorrow for this crime is killing me.
Change and Mortality
I will quote another great man, Stefanos Rozanis, who said:
There can be no life without change. If life is not a constant becoming, it ceases to be life. It is a grave. It is death. The will to change myself first, is a utopia.
Conclusions (maybe?)
And maybe that is what we fear, as we approach death. The mind of many becomes conservative and stops aspiring to change, to progress. It fears it, in fact. That is why — as Liantinis said — we, the older ones, keep devouring the flesh of the younger. We corrupt their minds “with all kinds of shit and garbage,” as Chronis Misios would have put it. As experts and specialists, we try to make children think through our prism — the prism of immutability, the prism of unacknowledged impending death. Because when you’re young, you carry the innocent illusion that you are immortal, and it is that innocent lie that gives the younger generations the source and the power for change, for progress.
So, let me say it one more time. Let us shut the fuck up and let them walk. Our role was to teach them to stand up, to take the first step — nothing more.
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