Parents have spent most of the last four years fighting battles that seem to be out of a futuristic parody. They've been coined as domestic terrorists for calling out school authorities. To protect their children, they've had to abstain from brands like Disney, who has been parents' trusted source of child entertainment for decades. In addition, they're fighting the subconscious influence of behemoths like TikTok and Instagram, who have massive footholds on pretty much every human on Earth.
Then, you pair those things with current arguments we never thought would be issues. When did cross-dressers exposing themselves to children become a controversial subject?
Society is changing quickly, and we're dealing with a massive identity crisis. It doesn't take much sense to recognize that if something doesn't change, we are headed for deep hurt in the near future.
Recently, I was speaking with someone about her son. She was relaying how frustrated she was at his lack of drive. He's a twenty-year-old who comes home from college and locks himself in one of her rooms. He sabotages job interviews, refuses to contribute, and threatens her with statements like: "The more you push me, the less I'm motivated to get a job."
Take into account: this guy doesn't drink or do drugs. He can barely do his own laundry. His issues aren't tied to rebellion. He's just a lazy, entitled bum living in a young adult's meat suit with a two-year old's state of mind. Even more, he is completely oblivious to the irony of when he says things like, "I'm an adult. I'll make my own decisions." It's pathetic, and — as a man — it burns me up inside. There's nothing worse than a son disrespecting his mother, especially if he's completely naive that he's doing so.
The conversation eventually led to the question: "How likely is he to be any type of success?"
My answer? "It's very low. In fact, I'd almost say it's zero, except for that fact that there will probably be some unknown external events that cause him to shift his paradigm."
Who's to blame, though? Without dismissing that it's probably a compilation of a lot of factors, who's mostly responsible? Is it his parents or his peers? Is it social pressure and technology or his environment? Is it himself?
All of these questions are reasonable, but the core issue is the son lacks vision and values. He simply has nothing he wants bad enough to get him to change, and no one is willing to do what it takes to create enough adversity in his life to force him to make a decision.
The other day, I did a little video about the first time I remember being held accountable about respect from someone other than my parents.
Our next-door neighbor, Mike, corrected me when I didn't look at him while shaking his hand at church. I was probably six years old — maybe even younger.
He stuck out his hand and said, "What's up son?" I grabbed it, but I didn't look up at him when I did. He didn't wait for my father to correct me, though. He simply said, "Cody, when you shake someone's hand, you look 'em in the eye." When I peeked up at him, he smiled at me and firmed up the shake a little more.
I just remember feeling the respect from Mike. He took a moment to teach me that if I earned it, others would respect me just like they did him. It made me feel good and confident, and every time after that, I took pride in the way I shook hands.
It was a simple lesson, but it was a pivotal one. It taught me that respect isn't deserved; it's earned. It's given by others based on the merit of the person in front of them.
That concept is hard for many people to grasp. Ego tells us that we deserve for people to respect us and care about us just because we breathe air. However, the truth is: that's just not real.
My father was a horse trainer, and he once said, "Cody, when you walk into a stall with a 1,000-pound animal, remember, it can kill you. You have to be acutely aware of what the animal is telling you and the boundaries it's setting. When you listen, it knows you understand respect, and once it knows that, you can build trust. Trust is the key to having a great relationship with the horse."
He followed it up with, "If you don't respect him, he'll make sure you know to next time."
This concept isn't just applicable to animals, though. We operate the same way throughout social experiences. However, in today's world, rather than pinning our ears and turning our rear-ends, we tend to distance ourselves from the next occurrence. The guy that has no respect gets to save face and go on living life as a parasite, suckling off the tits of others, while most of us just ensure he's never allowed back at the ranch.
See, somewhere along the way, we lost the concept of respect. Rather than building relationships, we began seeking the cement to build walls around our insecurities. Everyone with a smart phone can escape to virtual bubbles that affirm their ideas, and many times, those ideas just suck.
More and more people walk into a stall and expect to be able to climb on any horse, not realizing that if he or she can, someone else did years' worth of work for that to be possible. They don't put together that just because the horse is confident, it tolerates them. It doesn't equate to anything they've earned.
In the example of the twenty-year old son, he simply has no confidence; he's threatened by anything that makes him uncomfortable, and because life hasn't been forced upon him, he has no reason to break that pattern. He constantly feels like I did as a kid when Mike approached me with his hand out. He's insecure, unsure, and scared of learning something new. The difference is rather than seeking the Mikes of the world, the son finds Karens.
These are first-world problems, I know. However, as the saying goes, "Good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times."
We're in a revolutionary-type period, where we need the next steps: "hard times create strong men, and strong men create good times."
This is where my confidence lies. The pendulum swings, men start shaking hands again, and respect becomes a flagship principle as it has been in the past.
It must start with us, though. It's great to talk about problems, but we always have to end with a solution, and I think we can take a play out of Mike's playbook and be a great influence on the next 100 years.
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