I'm always telling my students to write more on their own to improve themselves and always chide myself because I know I'm not going to take the same advice. I journal every few days...or once a week...but it's not like I used to journal when I felt like every thought or action I had was of universal importance.
"Today I bought the school lunch instead because I forgot to bring my own."
Mmmm....groundbreaking stuff.
I have PILES of journals dating back to 6th grade when I was reading California Diaries, the spin-off of Baby-Sitters Club, and realized the immediate importance of documenting the dramas of my life. Reading through some of them, they amaze me at how...young...I was. I thought I was so FUNNY. Stuff like, "insert name couldn't get anymore annoying...NOT." More groundbreaking prose.
So, it makes me wonder what I'll think of myself looking back another 15-some years down the road. It's so weird to think of being 40, probably as weird as it was in 6th grade to think of being 26. I also wonder what future generations will think when they look back on mine. What will some of the huge hot-button issues today look like to them? Probably what the Civil Rights movement looks like to me. They'll look at issues like legalizing marijuana and go, "Really? Why was that such a big deal?" But, because I'm living in the middle of the controversy, I'll respond like any good older generation with, "You weren't there, so you just don't get it." And I won't get why THEY don't get it because it seems so obvious to me.
What other issues will look silly to those nameless, faceless future punks and hoodlums who can't respect the better generations before them? I'd like to imagine there will be some huge health movement where all soda is no longer produced and in classrooms, bored students in some history class will vaguely wonder, "Who in their right minds would even drink that stuff?" and then go back to staring at the wall until their lunch of carrots and organic Acai juice.
Bigger question yet: what will become acceptable (or even good) that is so obviously wrong to us now? I personally think (I won't win any debates with this, just thoughts) that, ethically, people will become less and less concerned with the idea of killing older fetuses. According to this article (look at my citing skills paying off!), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19815095, one woman is trying to lower the abortion limit from 24 to 20 weeks in the U.K., meaning that right now a legal abortion takes places up to SIX MONTHS. I'm not going to go into much here because, honestly, I don't know exactly where I stand with abortions, but six months seems like it shouldn't even be in question whether or not that baby is alive. So, legally, we're allowing that up to 6 months. I just feel like that age could continue to climb higher. I don't even know what that would look like, but I read an article....http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/after-birth-abortion-can-they-be-serious/2012/03/03/gIQADgiOsR_blog.html that shows this idea has at least been introduced and considered. In short, it will be interesting and scary to see how things continue to play out.
I must be getting older, because I'm starting to think that the way I grew up was "in better times." In class we were discussing a chapter where the author suggested buying a Dictionary to look up how to spell words and one student rightfully asked, "Why when I have a phone?" I looked at the copyright and the first edition was 1993, so most likely this was just a dated tip. However, even though you can look up almost any dictionary on a phone, there's something that claws inside me, wanting to rip the phone away and say, "No! Use a book, you dummy!" But why? Because that's the way that I learned it!
The times be a-changing.
