Adulthood Doesn’t Come With a Mute Button

Were we all this much of a pansy growing up?

I keep reading about kids going virtual because they’re being bullied, switching to online school because the hallways feel too crowded, or avoiding situations because they make them uncomfortable. And I find myself wondering: when did the answer to everything uncomfortable become removing the uncomfortable thing?

Now before somebody loses their mind, I KNOW bullying can be serious. I’m not talking about a child being threatened, assaulted or genuinely unsafe. That absolutely needs to be dealt with. I’m talking about normal life being uncomfortable.

We got picked on. We had kids who didn’t like us. We walked into cafeterias wondering where we were going to sit. We had teachers we couldn’t stand, crowded hallways, embarrassing moments, broken hearts, mean girls and kids who could be complete assholes. And somehow we survived it. More importantly, we learned how to deal with people.

That’s part of growing up. You learn that not everybody is going to like you. You learn how to stand up for yourself. You learn how to walk into a room where you don’t feel completely comfortable. You learn that anxiety and discomfort don’t automatically mean you’re in danger.

I worry that sometimes, in our attempt to protect kids from every bad feeling, we’re accidentally teaching them that they can’t handle bad feelings. What happens when they’re adults?

Jobs are crowded. Bosses can be difficult. Coworkers can be jerks. Relationships hurt. People criticize you. Somebody will eventually hurt your feelings, leave you out, disagree with you or make you uncomfortable. There isn’t always going to be a virtual option where you can shut the laptop and make everybody disappear.

Obviously every child and every situation is different. Some kids genuinely thrive with virtual school, and sometimes leaving a bad environment is absolutely the right decision. But removing every obstacle isn’t the same thing as helping a child overcome one.

Maybe our job isn’t to make sure our kids never feel uncomfortable. Maybe our job is to teach them, “Yep, this sucks. Now let me show you that you can handle it.” Because childhood is supposed to prepare you for adulthood. And adulthood doesn’t come with a mute button.

There Isn’t Enough Bubble Wrap in the World

We cannot protect our kids from every mean comment, hurt feeling, or crappy person they’re going to encounter. Instead of expecting everyone else to teach their kids how to act, teach yours how to respond. Give them the confidence to stand up for themselves, the strength to walk away when they need to, and the understanding that not everyone is going to be nice. There isn’t enough bubble wrap in the world to get our kids through life completely unscathed. Our job isn’t to make sure nothing ever hurts them—it’s to teach them how to handle it when something does.

Don't Forget The Victims

Sometimes it is really hard for me to keep what I consider reality in my thinking when there are so many people out there who seem to feel sorry for the person who committed the crime.

I read a post today about Christa Pike. It talked about her childhood, her trauma, mental illness, relationships, brain development and what her life has been like in prison. And I get it. All of those things may help explain how she became the person she became. But explaining something doesn't make it okay. It doesn't erase what happened.

Because somewhere in all of that was Colleen Slemmer. Colleen was 19 years old. She had a whole life ahead of her too. She should have had the chance to grow up, make mistakes, fall in love, have a family, change her mind, become a different person and live out the rest of her life. Instead, she was beaten, tortured and murdered.

And this isn't just about Christa Pike. I see this kind of thinking all the time now. People who spend so much time talking about what happened to Lindsay Clancy and wearing pink like idiots that the three children she killed seem to become secondary. People who believed Karmelo Anthony deserved another trial. He admitted to doing it! People who don't seem to have a problem with someone being here illegally even when they kill someone. And I find myself sitting here thinking...when did we become so forgiving of the person who did the terrible thing? You cannot just forget the victims and the families who had to suffer because of it.

I don't even have compassion for them. I don't care if it's mental illness, childhood trauma or someone's life circumstances. After the crime, it simply doesn't matter to me. The victims matter.

Whatever happened to Christa growing up may help explain how she became who she was. But it does not erase what happened to Colleen. Plenty of people survive horrible childhoods, abuse, trauma and circumstances that I can't even imagine without going on to torture and murder another human being.

And maybe that's the part I struggle with. I don't need to understand every detail of the person who committed the crime to know what matters. The bottom line is that someone was hurt or killed, and their life should not become nothing more than a footnote while we spend years trying to understand the person who took it from them.

If we're going to tell someone's whole life story, tell the victim's story too. Remember who they were. Remember their family. Remember the life they should have had.

Don't make the victim the footnote.

Listen LINDA! Hard Didn’t Just Get Invented

You ever notice when you tell somebody something that might actually help them—advice from your own life, something you struggled with, figured out, and did to better yourself—the first response is, “Well, it was easier back then.”

That’s bullshit.

It wasn’t easier. It was different.

If it had been easy for me, I wouldn’t have had to figure out how to overcome it in the first place. I didn’t magically get handed a life with no obstacles just because it happened 10, 20, or 30 years ago. I had bills. I had responsibilities. I had kids. I had setbacks. I had times when I didn’t know how in the hell I was going to make something work. And somehow, I figured it out.

Were things cheaper? Some things were. You know what else was cheaper? My paycheck.

Did we have different opportunities? Sure. We also didn’t have half the resources people have today. There wasn’t an app for everything. You couldn’t Google how to do something, apply for 20 jobs from your couch, work remotely, have groceries delivered, start a side business online, or find a YouTube video showing you step-by-step how to do practically anything.

Every generation has advantages the generation before it didn’t have, and every generation gets handed a brand-new pile of problems to go with them.

That’s life.

So when somebody who has already climbed over an obstacle tells you what worked for them, maybe instead of immediately explaining why you can’t possibly do it because they had it easier, listen to what they’re actually saying. Their exact solution may not fit your life perfectly. Adjust it. Change it. Find the modern-day version of it.

But don’t dismiss the lesson just because it came from a different time.

Sometimes “it was easier back then” really means, “I don’t want to hear that fixing this might require me to do something hard.”

Times change. Circumstances change. The details change.

But hard has always been hard. And excuses have always been easier.

The Math Ain’t Mathing

I’m sorry, but I have several people on my feed selling different get rich type things, so I’m just gonna say it. If you’re constantly on social media telling people how to get rich and achieve “financial freedom,” eventually people are going to look at your life and realize the math ain’t mathing.

You don’t have to actually be rich to look successful, but if you’re selling wealth, there should eventually be some evidence that what you’re selling works. If you’re still working a regular job, living in a rental, driving the same cars and using the same old technology while telling everyone else how much money your “investments” are making—people are going to start questioning it.

And you can only use “I’m paying off debt” for so long. At some point, if this opportunity is making the kind of money you claim it is, something should change.

There’s nothing wrong with working a job. There’s nothing wrong with renting. There’s nothing wrong with not having expensive things. But don’t sell those same people a fantasy of financial freedom when you aren’t living it yourself.

Meanwhile, people who have spent decades working, building careers, saving and investing are buying the cars they want, building their dream homes and enjoying what all those years of work created.

If you’re selling “get rich,” eventually you need to look like it worked.

Otherwise, stop selling the dream and READ THE ROOM.