The Price of Survival

In about a year and a half, I will suddenly be thrown into the world of laundary, of cooking, and of scheduling for myself.  This frightens me simply because I have had my mother to cater to my needs for seventeen and a half years, and soon she will be gone, three hours down a long stretch of Highway 30.  Until I figure out a better way to hem pants, I will more than likely duct tape the ends up.  Microwave cuisine will dominate my nutrition, and I will have to face the horrible coin-operated washing machine all alone, armed only with a desperate need for a clean pair of jeans.

This is a part of the American educational system that some get to experience.  While learning calculus, a student must also learn to live.  This phase of existence is for most an unconscious right of passage, beyond the driver's license or the legal drinking age.  To conquer to complexities of adult humdrumity is both exciting and overlooked.

America's ideal teenager is an overworked, overactive ball of stress.  School from as early as seven in the morning to as late as 4 in the afternoon.  Music lessons, volunteering, clubs, jobs, sports, speech teams, theater productions, concerts, weekend plans, showcoir competitions, and family time.  In between chemistry homework and showcoir practice, there isn't much time to learn to sew on a button or learn to cook a nutritious, cheap meal -- much beyond a Smart Ones concoction.  These are the kids who pull decent grades, who don't get caught doing all the awful stuff they could devote their lives to, and who are destined for a prosperous middle-class life. 

But when survival invades -- and I mean the idea of no food in the refrigerator, the dirty toilet, the piles of laundary -- America's teenager has been thrown into a ring to fight a bull, blindfolded.  The insane obsession with preparing for a well-to-do lifestyle sometime in the distant future, the crazed race for advantages that will translate into college acceptance, into higher-level degrees, into a comfortable job, into a home with all the fixings, has managed to silence the selfish survival instinct that children used to learn before heading off into life.  Americans are characteristically selfish.  We have been known to be ridiculed by natives of countries we visit (in their language, of course) for being loud, pushy, sloppy, and kind of rude.  Humans known deep down inside themselves that selfish behavior is wrong -- well, most of us do.  But if we expect each generation to try and find a way to rise above the self-centered template we have been given, it doesn't follow that at a time when a truly selfless personality should develop, when young adults are learning just how big and wonderful the world is, especially outside of their life, these same people must constantly think about THEIR own survival, THEIR own well-being.

There really isn't much of a solution to this problem.  It isn't a cut and dry case of diet and exercise will lead to a healthy lifestyle.  This is an instance where individual people can choose to try and change the world just by changing the way they think.  Selfish, arrogant, disinterested teenagers could morph into some of the most caring people on the planet if they learned to survive.  That out of the way, a whole lot of time is free for other things.  If you aren't so absorbed in the urgency of your own life, it may just be possible to hold the door for the lady with a stroller or smile at random passerby.