making a difference

Aaaagh…what is wrong with the youth of today!

Posted on by Phil Corbett

Aaaagh…what is wrong with the youth of today!

They sure do not work like we did, behave like we did or appreciate things like we did when we were kids.

Have you ever heard someone make a statement like that? How about these complaints?

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. – Socrates

“The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint… As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.”
 – Peter the Hermit, AD 1274

I am sure many of you have seen one or both of these quotes passed around the Internet at some point in the past decade. Whether either person actually said what is quoted is questionable, just the fact, though, the quotes have been referred to for decades, if not centuries, illustrates how common complaining about the youth of today is, no matter what time period “today” pertains to.

It just seems that one inalienable right of any generation is the right to complain about the generations that come after them. Granted, in many ways each successive generation has it easier than the previous generations. That is just the nature of living in a developing world. But when you take the time to get involved with youth and realize what they are doing, you would find out they are doing some amazing things, while facing challenges many of us did not need to face.

A few years ago, I participated in an online discussion (argument) on this subject. I think the discussion began with the mention of a newspaper article regarding some trouble some youths got into. One of the other participants was trying to make the point that today’s youth are lazy and spoiled because none of them have to milk cows by hand anymore.

In addition to wondering why anyone would want to milk cows by hand today, I responded to him with this:

Before we start making huge generalizations about “kids” please consider a few things. If you have concerns about the character or work ethic or whatever of kids these days, they did not raise themselves. If you want to blame someone, blame the generation that raised them (that would include all adults and not just the parents).

Mostly, I would seriously disagree with the generalizations about what is wrong with kids these days. Yes, there are some, maybe many, who do not work as hard as the previous generations. (Each generation seems to think the next generation is just not as good as they were. All of us were the next generation at one time.) If you want to see how hard kids work or the many amazing things they do, though, take the time to get involved in the lives of young people. You will see how many of them are balancing course loads in high school that many of us never handled until later in college. You will see them volunteering hundreds of hours of time, not to make themselves look good for scholarships and college applications, but because they truly want to make a difference. You will see them trying to fit this in with practice schedules and other time commitments many of us did not have until we started our careers. You will see kids who genuinely celebrate the triumphs of their peers and tearfully rally around each other in times of tragedy. Working in a high school, I get to see this everyday and I am fortunate.

Let’s pay less attention to the headlines about those who do not behave well and take the time to find out about and support those who do the right things but will never make the headlines.

From my viewpoint, our future is in good hands.

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Making A Difference

Posted on by Phil Corbett

Some people strive to change the world. Most of us hope to just have a positive impact on the world around us. That is okay. Enough people making seemingly small differences in their worlds can affect the larger world. To me, that is what Paying It Forward and committing Random Acts of Kindness are all about – doing little things to effect a bigger change.

Of course, long before those phrases became popular, people were making a difference. Irene is one of those people. Though she died 20 years ago, at the age of 89, her unconditional love for people, her steadfast belief in the goodness of people, and her willingness to reach out to people in need is an inspiration still today.

Irene and her husband, Harold, raised four biological children and were official foster parents to an additional 51 children, including one who stayed for over 12 years. He is actually considered one of Irene and Harold’s five children and a brother by the four biological children. In addition to the 51 official foster children, they took in dozens of other children whose families were struggling somehow. Some stayed for a few days and some for a few weeks. All stayed for free.

Irene found one such child in a post office. After striking up a conversation with a young mother, Irene found out the mother needed to have an operation and had no place for her baby to stay. Irene offered to take care of the baby and the mother accepted. Irene had no assurance that the mother would come back for the baby but she just trusted that the mother would. Several weeks later, the mother did.

During the Depression of the 1930s, Irene often provided meals at her home for hungry and homeless wanderers. Once she hired an armless man to do some yard work for her and then decided he needed a bath and some clean clothes, especially socks. One of her children found her on the floor trimming the man’s toenails so they wouldn’t cut holes in the new socks she gave him.

While having coffee at a local bakery, Irene overheard an employee asking a man who was loitering to leave. The man said he was waiting for his granddaughter to pick him up. The employee told the man if he was not gone in a half an hour, he would call the police. After finishing her coffee, Irene told the employee to call her, not the police, if the man’s granddaughter did not show up. Of course, soon after she got home, Irene got the call. She had someone go get him and bring him to her home. She fed him, got him cleaned up and gave him some of her husband’s clothes.

Irene knew of an elderly bachelor in her neighborhood who had lived a lonely life, with few relatives or friends, if any. She took it upon herself to go to his apartment daily to take care of him. On the man’s last birthday before he died, she baked a cake, grabbed some of her grandchildren and threw him a party. He wept.

Even when her husband was in the hospital, Irene did not stop reaching out to others. If other patients’ relatives did not have a place to stay, many ended up eating and staying at Irene’s.

When Irene died in 1992, her obituary in the Star Tribune, Minnesota’s leading newspaper, was four inches high and five columns wide. Irene did not die wealthy but she died rich – rich from a lifetime of touching the lives and hearts of others and making a difference. She was “paying it forward” and committing “random acts of kindness” before either were even thought of.

Now I admit, with the way things are today, it can be difficult, even dangerous, to do some of the things Irene did. We may not be able to do the same actions Irene did but there is nothing stopping us from having the same attitudes Irene had. When we look outward and not just inward, focusing on helping others and not just making sure we are taken care of, it is amazing the impact we can have. I know many people, including me, have tried to live their lives inspired by Irene’s example.

By the way, though most people called her Irene, I just called her Grandma.

Note: These examples are just a few of the many things Grandma did in her life. To give credit where credit is due, I became aware of them through conversations with my father and his siblings and through two newspaper articles published many years ago in the Star Tribune by Oliver Towne and Robert T Smith.