Emo Culture: Are Parents Culpable?

Emo culture is loosely identified with young people who are overly emotional and sensitive. They are also introverts. This sub-culture has also been associated with depression, self injury and suicide.

The Russians consider it as a dangerous teen trend that promotes behaviour that is anti-social and have outlawed emo styles at schools.
Emo followers are reported to be promiscuous and suicidal. They often cut themselves and the scars of this self-harm are often displayed as badges of courage on their websites.

They usually wear tight jeans with studded belts and tight short-sleeved t-shirts with the names of emo bands. Black wristbands are part of their gear. Their hair styles are short with choppy layers and pink, blonde or blue highlights are popular. The side-swept bangs are long and often cover one eye.

Their songs contain morbid lyrics which express their feelings about life. Depression, confusion, anger at the world around them, self-harm and suicide are part of the emo community.

This movement has taken root in Malaysia and young girls who are depressed and stressed are attracted to it. The feeling that society misunderstands them and the feeling of being unaccepted evoke emotional reactions and self-inflicted cuts on their body. Their world is totally alien to their parents.

How could this state of things come about? This unbridgeable gap between parents and offspring?

Could it be that parents themselves, eking out a living, having no time to communicate and bond with their young, are culpable? Not taking the time to understand their youngsters, to talk and bond with them, doing things together with them, building rapport with them, nurturing trust and confidence as they grow…..has this driven a wedge between parents and children?

Leaving them to grow up on their own, without emotional support, without the secure knowledge that parents are there for them, their confidantes…..perhaps this is the toll. The young having to pay the price, driven to doubtful company and depression, sometimes culminating in suicide.

Parents, do not abdicate responsibility by spending your time garnering wealthy ambitions. Your children do not need the expensive gadgets, the “freedom” to do what they want. Your children need you right from their formative years throughout their teens and beyond. Make time for them. Time that steals past ever so swiftly and before you realize it, the damage is irreparable.

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How I Want To Live.

How long we can live is an unknown and we don’t have any say in it. However, how we want to live the life we have is within our control.

Have you ever considered how you want to live your life?

As you were growing up, were you able to plan what you would do when you became an adult? Or was your future mapped out by your elders?

Or were you lucky enough to pursue your dream and now live your life as you wanted?

Or did you do what your peers did?  If your friends decided to take up a certain course of study did you also do the same, simply went along with what your friends were doing?

Sometimes it is difficult not to do what your parents want you to do. If you refuse to heed their wishes it would be considered unfilial. Perhaps in these days things have changed. Parents have become more amenable to their off spring’s desire to pursue a career of his choice.  Young people these days are very lucky.

For me, I had no choice. My future was mapped out by my mother who was firmly convinced that teaching was the best profession for a girl. In those days, school was only half a day and weekends were off. There were also the school holidays.

I was pushed into a profession that I had never considered in the first place. Application forms were completed by her and when I was offered the opportunity to go for teacher training in the UK, I had no choice but to go as my mother’s heart was set on it. It was very painful for me to have to leave the sixth form to fly so far away to a distant land. I was only 17 years old and all alone in my misery and heartbreak as I had to leave my beloved behind.

Years passed and I slipped into the norm of living, working, getting married, raising children and now I’m retired, free at last to do what I want, to live the way I want, bar a few restrictions.

I want to live a life where I can enjoy the fellowship of good friends, morning golf, learning and working on my computer, enjoy good food and to travel. This is how I want to live and praise the Lord, He has blessed me with the life that I’m living now. I have all the above and two grandchildren who are such a joy, loving and filial children, as well as good siblings. My cup is full. Glory be to God.

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Recycling or Is There More?

While waiting for my flight I noticed a few things. Next to me was a young couple with a 2 to3 month old baby girl who kept fretting although her mother tried to placate her by giving her a bottle of milk. However, she didn't want it and resumed her cries. The mother then walked off with her, probably to placate her. You know how some babies like to be carried and walked about.

A few feet away was a father, likely to be in his late thirties, carrying a little girl just over a year old and soothing her by caressing her head. Together with him were a boy aged about 4 and a girl who I think could be 7 years old. A family man probably going on vacation with his family or returning to his home after a holiday.

In front of me was an elderly couple, the man with white hair and his wife whose hair was grey mixed with black. They were obviously travelling on their own without any children in tow. Their children would be adults with their own families by now.

To me these people represent the cycle of life or should I say, the recycling of life. We all go through the same cycle, being born, nurtured and educated, get onto the treadmill of working life, find a mate,

build our nest and have a family,

then growing old,

thus renewing the cycle, generation by generation. Is this part of the Plan to ensure that the human race does not go extinct?

I read somewhere that we are energy and that we chose to assume physical form because we want to learn something or we need to learn something. There is a difference between want and need and I'm thinking that even at the level of energy, there must be a difference so that some can assume physical form in order to learn something to satisfy that want while for the others there is a need to further learn something which they didn't quite succeed in doing during their time on earth. So they are compelled to return to continue learning.

I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say. As forms of energy we are given a choice as to what we wish to learn, the time frame which we think will be sufficient for us to learn and also the manner in which we want to learn. In so far as that goes, it is also likely that we have even pre-determined our lives, the obstacles we will go through and the manner by which we will return to our original energy form.

Once we have assumed physical form, we forget that our lives have actually been planned by ourselves before we became human beings and so we go through the various stages of life, learning as we go, through our achievements and failures until it is time for us to check out.

Once we check out we are called to account for what we have done while in physical form, whether we have succeeded in our quest.

This is what I think must be the purpose of our existence on earth, to learn something, not merely go through the motions of living. God gave us a choice, what we want to do. What do you think?

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