Despite popular belief you can actually learn things from reading the comment section on YouTube. It can be a great place to look at human nature at its most common, which is often its lowest. I wouldn’t recommend that you there for any insight from the actual comments themselves of course, but they provide a glimpse into the mind of the average person at least. And that can be enlightening, as well as horrifying. However what I’m talking about today isn’t necessarily horrifying so much as it’s sad.
With the potential to be horrifying generations down the road. Anyways I like listening to music while I write, with what I’m writing often dictating the music. I’m also a big fan of stories and storytelling and like watching trailers or pivotal scenes in movies, even ones I haven’t watched, to try to understand the structure of them and things done right. And I’ll often scroll down to see the reactions that others had to a particular scene or music.
Which is when I noticed a trend, especially with modern Western males. And that is their biggest hardship in life being school work. Western school work. Tests are their great struggles, their great challenges. The beast in the darkness…tests. Now I know not to take YouTube comments too seriously but this is something that I see far beyond YouTube. But when also across the society in general. And to me when one’s biggest hardship in life is a school test, they’ll never be prepared for the world.
Does Any Of This Matter?
Now you might be thinking “So what Charles? It was bad that we made things good for our kids? We should throw them to the wolves and see what happens?” and no that’s not what I’m saying, it’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that when one’s biggest hardship in life is some dumb school test then you have a problem. You’re creating generations that won’t only not be able to cope with the real world but will never be competitive with other tribes and nations that overcome real problems and issues in their lives. Again I’m not saying kids should be beaten and left for dead or anything like that. Just stating that if schoolwork is the biggest “challenge” then there’s a problem.
On many different levels. Now granted if you’re in law school or med school then okay, yeah, tests can be the biggest challenge in your life at that point in time and that makes sense. But in general, especially with how low modern education is? Of course not. You should be challenges in multiple ways at multiple points in your life. Not cruel challenges but hard ones, and there’s a difference. Something I don’t have the time to go into here. We don’t want cruelty (though many are drama queens and think everything and anything that inconviences them is cruel anymore) we want hard ship. Doing the hard thing.
It could be working on a farm, it could be competitive sports, it could be starting a business, it could be overcome basic life challenges, and so on and so forth. We live in a weird period in time where natural life isn’t going to throw enough hardship in some people’s way to toughen and wizen them up enough to do well in the real world. And by real world I mean real world, not just the world adults live in, which is just as sheltered as any other world out there. Even those who come from the “struggle” are pampered queens, and act that way, compared to the vast majority of world history.
Court The Right Kind Of Hardship
You want hard not cruel. Meaning for yourself it’d be wise to do something that’s hard and you’re scared of doing. Maybe it’s give a speech to a room full of people or maybe it’s run your own homestead. Both good hard options. It’d be stupid to do something like slap a wild cat in the mouth and tangle with it, it’d be stupid to smoke a pack a day and try to run a marathon. Obvious examples but you get the point. On the other side say someone makes their son compete in a sport, that’s a good hardship. Say that same person beats him every day, that’s a cruelty and will only destroy him.
So, like most things, the definition we’re using of hardship matters greatly. Understand that life itself is going to throw cruelties in your way and you’re going to have to overcome them. No reason to court any more cruelties then you’re already going to get. But hardships, those you should seek out and overcome. Maybe challenge would be the better word here, or doing hard things. Whatever works so that you get the point that you should be striving, fighting, and working hard for something that’s hard to get and achieve. Not just for the hell of it, but one, because it’s good for you and two, it’ll prepare you for the things that life is going to throw in your way. And trust me life’s going to throw some things.
If the only thing you or one you look after has to worry about is schoolwork then something is wrong and you’re not going to be prepared for life. We all need hardship, we all need struggle, we all need worthy goals that we vie for. Sure different levels for different people. I wouldn’t expect a child to bear under the same things as the father of a family. Or a wife to bear under what a husband does in the same way and so on and so forth. But everyone still needs hardship. Without it humans grow soft, weak, dumb, and miserable, overall they just don’t function right.
So go out and find hardship, overcome it, and be better, and happier, for it.
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-Charles Sledge
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