I Cried Today (written 02/09/13)

Every so often I transcribe interviews for these social workers/counselors and their juvenile, male clients. To tell you that I am left breathless by the interviews is an understatement. I would never divulge the nature or details of the information I transcribe, but, I will say, just a moment ago I broke down in tears (it’s not the first time). Even as I type these words I’m crying. To hear a young man, 17 years old, say, “Bad things happen to bad people,” in the context of what I've already heard, helped me to appreciate how lost and helpless an entire generation is. Particularly if you understand what he was saying was he was a “bad person.” Without some form of encouragement he would never understand that he’s just a young man who has merely made some “bad choices,” but he still has an opportunity to make different and better decisions.   

There have been times in my life when I also felt absolutely helpless: when my mom’s house almost went into foreclosure, along with millions of other homes; when my uncle was found dead a week after my dad and I looked for him; when I wrote my first book and it ended up becoming a legal fiasco, and I could go on. Each time I cried first, prayed, and then received the strength to get through each and every situation. Young people are so ill-equipped to deal with life as it’s dealt to them. Not that they can’t; they’re just ill-equipped and they often choose to listen to others who are just as badly prepared as they are.

Anybody who knows me knows that that I lean towards males because I have four brothers and four nephews. It wasn't so much that the client was a young man, but that he was a young person. I look at the plight of young people today, young men and young women, and it’s one of the most unfortunate situations in modern society. From a spiritual standpoint, I get it; from a purely intellectual standpoint, not so much. Spiritually speaking, it’s the stream of time we’re living in and no one is immune to what’s going on with society or with the world. Intellectually speaking, I don’t get it because we’re, seemingly, more advanced in every area of life than we have ever been.

Anyway, I listen to these interviews of all of these lost young men and my heart goes out to them, to any young person that's out there lost. It's apparent that they have no idea what's going on. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say. I just know, today I cried for a young man who has probably said many times, "I'm a man," even though he's really just a boy, and he may be getting ready to find out, the hard way, what it really means to be a man.