Great Minds Think ...

Timothy Clark, in today’s newspaper, made some points in his column that tie into my previous two blogs. Among them:

If children don’t taste real success [or, in other words, accomplish something worthwhile], they may look elsewhere for fulfillment. They may get the idea that pleasurable pursuits are the equivalent of solid achievement. That is of course what our inane popular culture teaches, and children tend to believe what they are taught. The truth is much of the pleasure we seek is a waste of time. It leads to mediocrity, untapped potential and even destructive addiction.

If our children go back to school and have amassed nothing but hours on the gaming, Internet and television log, it will be a lost summer. We have a vested interest in our children, and we know the mass media does not.

Some of his recommendations?

Teach your children that the grand aim in life is not to consume, but to create and contribute. It’s a whole lot more fun.

Identify projects to complete: service, arts and crafts, music, cooking, gardening, learning a language, sports, home improvement.

To read more, go to http://desne.ws/KipoGV

My previous two blogs were each written without knowing what might catch my eye in the next day’s newspaper. I termed it serendipity yesterday when a new article tied into my previous theme. Three days in row, however, is more notable than mere serendipity. And it’s more notable than merely a case of  “great minds think alike.”  

“In the mouth of two or more witnesses shall everything be established.”

Yesterday’s newspaper URL for the article on the effect of electronic media on our brains and relationships is http://desne.ws/LzLkyc

SUMMER

It’s summer. Across the country, countless school children are reveling in their summer vacation from school. Unfortunately for the mothers or other supervisory adults of these children, the B-word is soon to or will inevitably threaten household peace: “I’m BORED!”

Back in the day when I had half a dozen (or so) complainers on my hands, my favorite responses to this silly complaint were: (#1) "Boring is good." (#2) "Sounds like you need some work to do … let’s see, how about …." (#3) "Only boring people get bored." Eventually, the complainers would get their imaginations in gear and cook up some kind of outlandish mischief to keep me from getting bored!

When I was a kid, during summer vacation my mom and dad had bottomless lists of things for us to do to keep us occupied. Occupied. Not entertained. Usually these occupations involved toiling away in the hot summer sun, or, in the sweltering, non-air-conditioned house, toiling away over a hot stove. “Vacation” it was not.

To be fair, I have to say that there was still plenty of time for day-dreaming, riding the horse, reading novels, climbing trees, and often just listening to the buzzing, chirping, sighing sounds of nature, soaking up the warm joy of the sun, finding wild berries to eat, watching the cumulus clouds billow overhead, catching frogs, and picking flowers.

Also, to be fair to the bored children, the “I’m bored,” whine, comes from a natural desire to be doing something productive and worthwhile with one’s time. Watching TV or videos, playing computer games, surfing the web, or endlessly updating one’s “status” on Facebook, are the easy entertainments that many thousands will turn to immediately to try to satisfy this irresistible desire.  Such entertainments, however, have no ability to satisfy the longing of the soul for something productive and worthwhile to do. They merely momentarily distract, lull, and dull the senses, leaving the soul empty and dissatisfied. Most children will even be decidedly grouchy after several hours of such entertainments. Days and weeks or months of this fruitless quest for satisfaction in soul-less entertainment can only produce dis-ease of the heart, mind, and soul.

Children, of course, are not the only ones who seek in vain for a sense of soul satisfaction through electronic media. They very likely are following the examples of their parents and so many others, who, perhaps fearing a sense of aloneness or absence of direction or emptiness, keep turning, ironically, to the media of emptiness for a remedy.

Identifying productive and worthwhile things to do with one’s time may be extremely challenging. A mother may not be omniscient enough to know what is perfect for any particular child. But a trip (or ongoing trips) to the library is a good place to start, and may even produce more terrific ideas of things to do than one summer allows for. Sometimes one idea from just one childhood summer may be enough for a lifetime of productive, worthwhile endeavors which will shape the character and do some good in the world, and not merely “entertain.”