Stop depresses

 

I'm not going to feel bad. Understand that. I am a mean old man and I lack certain sympathy for those situations which seem to reflect things that really aren't that bad.

In this part of the world, we are subject to limitations on our behavior because of the current pandemic. Masks, distance and a reduction of social contact. Word has gone out from some quarters that we need to be especially concerned about our young people and the sense of despair and depression that these limitations will engender. 

Oh, boo hoo.

Am I being callous? Maybe. Are there those already saddled with depression whose feelings this will exacerbate? No doubt. But they need not be isolated in any extreme way and their needs do not need to be ignored because of the current rules about school, religious outings and personal contact.

And I hate to turn into the old man who starts sentences with phrases like "when I was a boy" but, Hell, when I was a boy, we survived without the constant contact with peers afforded by technology. If you lived someplace distant from your friends, then from the time you left school to the time you returned to it, you simply didn't have contact with your friends. I also had significantly fewer TV channels, little to no internet or equivalent and much more rudimentary electronics to amuse me. And yet somehow I emerged with only the garden variety of emotional trauma.

Have we raised our children to be so dependent on interpersonal contact that they can't adjust to standing a few feet apart, not having sleepovers or (heaven forbid) spending time with their own family or reading a book? Are they starting so debilitated as to suffer incredible harm if we tell them to sit outside and a bit away from others instead of in the basement, sprawled out with legs intertwined? Can they not adjust to the new normal of wearing a mask and being aware of their bodies during the day that they must cry themselves to sleep at the loss of I don't even know what?

Some break the rules. Some also break other rules and we come down on them when appropriate in ways that are appropriate because we have these rules to maintain social order and well-being. If that means that a kid can't spend his sabbath afternoon playing basketball with his friends and maybe has to stay inside holding a conversation with a parent, then so be it.

Those who are in that exceptional category and do need to have clinical issues should have them addressed, but that is not the rule, so let's start expecting that our children are less fragile and explain to them that they are doing their part to protect lives.

And if WE can't follow the rules because we find them unfair, illogical or onerous, then we have no one to blame but ourselves when the laws become mandate and absolute. And we are probably the ones who have been poor role models and poor parents so we can't expect any better from our children.