The Lost Generation - Drugs have stolen our young People.
This has to stop. Parents are ignoring it, hoping it will go away..
Meanwhile, our Grandkids are dying but, apparently, therapy will make them better..
We start as children of our parents, grandchildren of their parents and we become the offspring of those that created us.
Our lives are formed by the upbringing we had and the upbringing they had and on it goes, back in to the years and the decades and the centuries and on and on it goes.
We are formed by the lives that our parents have lived and the ideas and ideals they had and the pain and the suffering and the joy and the heartache that made them and therefore made us.
Family.
Certainly, we deviate, once and a while and create a new side road; but, by and large, we are mirrors of our parents and they are mirrors of their parents.
But, no matter what we do and how we act and react, it will be the side roads that we take that can make all the difference.
Turn us from good people in to bad people or bad people in to good people.
Take my Dad, for example. The son of a poor family who struggled with poverty during the Great Depression.. Dad saw violence against women, fuelled by alcohol and poverty; children dying ( his own sister) and the reality of life that was hard and tough.
His father worked hard and did his best, served in the war and cared deeply for his Family. A chain smoker who died an early death from lung Cancer and a man who triumphed in so many ways throughout his relatively short life. He was grafter, a hard worker, a man who took care of his family.
My Dad's Mother was a worker as well. She slogged as a cleaner and kept the family together. The children never had the money for shoes and my Dad grew up wearing wooden soled clogs and gathering faggots of wood and coal off the streets in order to bring home something to heat their meagre home.
My father grew up to be a man who abhorred violence against women and never smoked. He never gambled and loved beautiful shoes. So many of his neighbours took to booze and violence.... my Dad did not go down that footpath.
My Mother was the product of a family unit whereby the father figure did not live up to her expectations. He was a farmer lacking in compassion and tended toward the brutal side of farming, slaughtering the livestock in front of the children and expecting them to accept reality for what it was. If you wanted to be fed, you had to slaughter the livestock. He treated his neighbours better than his own family and was known as a generous man. Yet my Mum and her siblings wore second hand clothes whilst the neighbours enjoyed the bounty of her " wonderful and benevolent " father.
Today, my Mum is a champion of animal welfare and takes pride in her appearance and love of clothes. Not expensive or over the top, but they are always new.
You see, we take what our parents have taught us, through their good ideas and bad ideas and we tailor those things to fit ourselves.
In my case, I was brought up in a clean, tidy, well fed, well shod and well clothed family that did not smoke gamble or beat their womenfolk.
My daughters married men and both spouses came from old fashioned and traditional family units.
My grandchildren now come to visit and they exhibit the same traits and characteristics that have flowed though our generations.
Yet I now have a Grandchild who is addicted to drugs and is under the care of a mental health unit. A young man who showed so much promise and was so intelligent and bright … yet is now destined to battle against forces that I cannot comprehend. A life that is no longer able to be protected by the Family Will, The Family Tradition or the Family fullstop.
What a bloody tragedy.
Drugs are destroying the Family Unit. Family Tradition. Things that we all took for granted are being wiped off the slate because Drugs, cheap, artificial drugs, are screwing up an entire generation.
In my opinion, this young group of people will be known as the Lost Generation - not because they were Indigenous or betrayed by the Australian Government , but because they were betrayed by themselves.
It is not my fault that my Grandson succumbed to drugs.
It is not his parent's fault.
It is not his familial background.
He was let down by no one but himself.
Just as my Mother chose to protect animals and my Father chose not to smoke or gamble, my Grandson had no reason to turn to drugs. His parents do not take drugs. His family do not take drugs.
He chose to.
Yet his family have to pick up the pieces and carry him, no doubt, to his grave.
At a little over 20 years of age, this young man has destroyed his life and his future because he felt bit depressed and got dumped by his girlfriend.
Drugs were a cheap short term fix but a long term death sentence. If he doesn't pull out of this nosedive in to hell, he will be dead by 30 and wonder why he squandered 70 years of life for a quick fix instead of following Family.
The only way that Life can be lived ( and not merely an existence ) is to follow the well trodden path of Family.
People wonder why President Trump is so fixated by the border wall and border security.
90% of all drugs flow in to America over that border.
In the meantime, young people like my Grandson are slowly dying because they chose to take a side road that had a sign post pointing to DEATH.
Yet our Parliamentarians are suggesting that the same drugs are tested to make sure that they will not kill our young people.
I call Bullshit.
Bullshit a thousand times over.
Bring back the Family. Bring back decency. Bring back Normality.
" Bring back outrage; bring back family whereby love does not just mean a cuddle - it also means a kick up the bum when it is needed.
Bring back a world where family can speak about things without walking on eggshells and fearing being cast out of the pack for fear of " offending."
Instead, older grandparents suppress their frustration until, like a pressure cooker, the anger, love and frustration explodes and the " caring " family, the counsellors and " support team " can all cluster around the poor victim and mutter to themselves that the oldie is ill, belongs in a home, a prison or mental unit for being mentally ill, deranged or simply " dangerous".
Well, it is time for the kick up the bum, the outrage, the anger, the love to come back. Have a group hug and talk about your problems does not work. Get angry, get bloody angry and find out the hell is going on that is so terrible that reality is unbearable. "
If we do not, we will truly have a Lost Generation.
What do you think?
What do you think?
