There's More To Life

May 26, 2013

... than just right now. But everyone says, now is where you have to live. This moment. Here. And yeah, I'm a believer in that. Sometimes when the now is wrought with fantastic suckage -- especially for young people -- the now is kinda on the lame.

I read about a suicide in New Jersey. Gabrielle Molina. A 12 year-old girl who may have taken her life because she was being cyber bullied. I don't know the hard facts. I'm not part of the "know" aside from what I've read via media posts. Nevertheless, here was a beautiful young life with potential beyond anything she could have imagined at 12 years-old. Now that is gone.

And be that adult who says to a young person that there's more to life than just right now. I've heard kids say they sometimes resent the It Gets Better Campaign because it suggests waiting for it to change -- sometimes years of waiting. When you're a kid, an hour can feel a forever. Years are almost unimaginable especially when you are in the thick of being different or maybe weird or bi-sexual, transgender, too short, not loud enough ... lack of fitting into the clique of social machine. In the great divide of being a teen, the lines are drawn with tenacity. How do we say, just hold on. It will get better.

Here's my thoughts. I wish there had been a It Gets Better Campaign when I was a kid. Where people stood up and said you can make it. I also believe it has to get better now. I would be elated to have a dialogue with other creatives and parents and young people about what it would begin to look like to have a program or process by which to empower young people to feel seen and heard now. Is there something else that we are all missing? Because New Jersey shouldn't of happened. Rehtaeh Parsons of Canada shouldn't have happened. Nigel Hardy of California, Jadin Bell of Oregon, Harley Donna McGuire of Maine, Audrie Pott of California, Eden Wormer of Washington, Phobe Prince of Massachusetts and so many more.

These kids could have done -- been anything. They were not the truth that others had fed them. Again, I'm someone watching through the glass window. As an artist and a human being, I don't want to watch and hope. I want to be a part of the solution. Don't you?