Consequences

I remember reading a while back that young people do not understand what consequences for their actions are until their frontal lobe develops in their brains at around 26.  I understood consequences much earlier than that due to my mother’s “consequences” when I did not behave like I should. I feared her “consequences” so I learned early what I should not do. I guess things ARE different now.

We have so many angry young people.  Many of these young people have much more than we seniors did in our youth, but they seem so unhappy with life. In fact, everyone younger than I am seems very angry about everything. Granted it might not have been great when I was their age, but I felt hope that things would get better.

Now that people can carry guns everywhere, this anger is demonstrated more than we would like.  Just take the shooting at schools and churches, for example.  I just cannot imagine hating so many people and wishing them dead or being so angry with coworkers that I kill them. I cannot imagine killing anyone, no matter what. I have a temper, but I learned to control it pretty well because of consequences I learned early in my life. And never did I think of killing anyone when I was angry.

Another thing I learned a while back is that depression is anger turned inward.  All of these “depressed” young people who do these awful things are really angry about something that lives within them.  Why haven’t we addressed the problems of anger and taught our young how to deal with it in ways other than killing?  That is a question that I cannot answer. As we senior adults realize things are different now. And no one wants to hear what we old folks think. We lived in another time and cannot relate.  That’s true, unfortunately. And it makes me so sad