Youth Isn't Always Wasted On The Young

We were watching a replay episode of NBC's Today Show and the Today's Concert Series guest was Dashboard Confessional (this episode was last Thursday I think) and of course I watched it. Anyway it they were playing Hands Down as their last song and since it is a pretty popular and good song even I was singing along. And when the camera was showing the ground you could see the teens singing along. My mom commented saying "Diyan sila magaling" (That's what they are good at). She was talking about the audience and their response by the way.

The thought just occured to me while I was washing the dishes after dinner and after watching the replay of this weeks One Tree Hill episode entitled "With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept". There was this girl named Abby Brown, one of the hostages in the room, who said:

"What's wrong with you? He's just a kid. We're all just kids and we just have this life and the things you say and do, we feel that. How can you have so much hate in your heart? How can you act like it doesn't matter? It does matter. What happened to us? We're just kids. We can't be like this. It's not possible."

Kids... that is what we still pretty much are. That is still what I am. I am still the child who is scared of the dangers and obstacles in the real world. I'm still scared of the real world. I still crave my parents approval. I still look upon others at times when I do not know what the heck I am even doing.

In less then a week I am going to be somehow placed in a different category again... I'll be seen as a true blue "young adult" even if my insides aren't prepared for the transition.

And I feel inside me that I am not prepared. I'm still a kid. Those singing along to Dashboard Confessional are still kids. We equate youth with carefreeness yet somehow we force the teens to grow up too fast, most of the times unwittingly so.

The exact comment my mom made is not really of that much importance. What it implies is what matters. Adults force us to be just like them. Sometimes they want us to be better than them so they could live vicariously through us.

We are the youth I understand that. We have responsibilities as we grow up I know that. I just wish that they'd cut us some slack sometimes. We get what goes on around us most of the time. We know how to be serious sometimes we punish ourselves even more than they do.

You say we don't understand the world. Maybe from your perspective. Don't you think that we are developing our own understanding?

My Journ professor Sir Esguerra said that we should not judge yesterday's newspapers by today's standards. Shouldn't that be the same too with other aspects? Like adolescent exuberance perhaps? I just want to repeat what Abby said... "We're all just kids and we just have this life and the things you say and do, we feel that."