Was 2021 better than 2020?

Often times, when we hold years up to one another in comparison, we are pretty clear on which were good ones and which were maybe not so good.

Right now though it doesn’t feel so much like time is passing in its usual linear way, separated so specifically by the arbitrary lines in the sand of months and years; but rather that we are in the midst of an experience that blurs lines of the usual markers. So, for instance, when we wake up on January 1, 2022 – it may be a new calendar year – but, we will still be in the middle of the same story. The one that’s been being told for the last several months, or, for this moment of time.

There are many threads that run through this moment – collectively and individually.

One of the collective threads, that actually proceeds this moment, doesn’t just taint this block of time, but, is crucial to our future. Everyone’s future. Everywhere.

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the United States surgeon general, has recently released a 53-page report warning of our youth’s mental health crisis.

As stated in The New York Times:

The report cited significant increases in self-reports of depression and anxiety along with more emergency room visits for mental health issues. In the United States, emergency room visits for suicide attempts rose 51 percent for adolescent girls in early 2021 as compared to the same period in 2019. The figure rose 4 percent for boys.

Though there are potentially many attributes that have gotten us to this point – social media, screen time, the fact that progress in improving climate change, racial injustice, income inequality is terribly slow – the point of the report is that we need more people out there dedicated to finding the answers to exactly why our kids are suffering so profoundly.

What does appear to be one consistency is the feeling of loneliness reported by our kids.

The New York Times:

The current generation of adolescents express heightened levels of loneliness — more than any other age group — despite spending countless hours connected over media.

The thing is – these kids – our kids – are the fiercest tools we’ve got.

They are our future.

They are the ones to save this planet. Produce real and lasting change with racial and social relations. Create ways forward for improving financial equality and the stopping of gun violence.

We need them. More than we’ve probably ever needed a rising generation before.

Leaving them to their devices has clearly had devastating effects.

We have got to do better by our beautiful kids.

Media and pop culture are beating the hell out of this young generation’s feelings of self worth. Rather, shouldn’t we be rising them up? Empowering them and supporting them to become the badasses we so desperately need them to grow into?

We don’t know when this moment will be over.

But, we can’t let it get the best of us.

We certainly don’t have the option to allow it to continue to get the best of our kids.

At this point it seems that rather then assuming our kids are okay – we should probably assume that they are not.

And that we need to…

nurture, encourage, engage, validate, nourish, praise, and love the heck out of them.

See them.

Hear them.

Handle and care for them like the precious commodity that they are.

We have got to heal them.

Soon enough, the power will be all theirs.

We have got to groom them to become the super heroes we are going to need them to be.