Give a
teenager an opportunity, and they will step up and get weird. (Thank god.)
Our current public
school endeavor is to defend a bad habit.
Most of my students thought of something within the first 10
minutes: lying, cheating, stealing,
procrastinating, being lazy. Others had
to think about it overnight before they came up much more dark topics, like
getting drunk, smoking pot, fist fighting, and (I swear I’m not lying here)
murder.
The point of
the essay is not to be satiric, something I reminded them of repeatedly, but to
actually defend doing something that most people think is bad. If someone says to you, “you’re being greedy”,
they don’t mean it as a compliment. But
greed drives capitalism, so it can’t be all that bad. Or if someone says, “you’re being selfish”,
they don’t mean it endearingly. But come
on, selfishness is sometimes necessary so that people don’t slip into the
terrible mode of caring about everyone’s needs before they take care of
themselves.
“Bad” habits
are what make people individuals. I’m
not saying we should all pick our noses or gossip or speed in our cars all the
time, but people will be people – flaws and all.
I am a
compilation of all my traits – good and bad.
All the bad shit that lives in my psyche contributes to who I am. Sometimes I’d like to hit RESET and get rid
of all my flaws, but if I did that, I would suck at my job, because I wouldn’t
be able to relate to the students who are broken and weird and quirky and
confused. I am all of those things
too. With all due respect, I like the
deviants more than the brown-nosing rule-followers. They’re more fun.
So the next
time someone implies that you should or shouldn’t do something, think about
YOU. Be selfish for a second. If the thing you’re doing is heroin, you
should probably stop before you overdose; but if you’re just being you, flaws and
all, then fuck ‘em. Do what you want.
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