Unrealized Potential

The title of today's blog post comes from a quote by former President Calvin Coolidge, "The most common commodity in this country is unrealized potential." My father-in-law used to have this and other Coolidge quotes around his house. He talked about the truth of them as he reflected on his life growing up in the Great Depression. He was a "self-made" man who always worked very hard (played hard too) and achieved much more than would have been predicted based on his scholastic apptitude. He would talk about the people he knew with more education or financial resources that ended up "bums". I'd have to agree with President Coolidge and my father-in-law, unrealized potential is rampant in our country, same as it was 80 years ago. The untimely death of Whitney Houston, a prodigious talent in the 1980's prior to well documented struggles with addictions to marijuana and cocaine (and likely other substances), brings this problem to light. Certainly, she is not the first celebrity, especially musician, to succumb to the lure of drugs/alcohol, but I find myself deeply saddened by the loss of such talent to make the world a little brighter. While the difficulties of too much money and not enough grounding are commonplace, there is a new and more subtle addiction afoot that I predict will lead to even more unrealized potential in our next couple of generations. That addiction is the lure of the virtual world. I'm engaging in this struggle with my oldest child. He will spend hours on Facebook and YouTube looking at how others are living, laughing at the inane videos, remarking about all the "stupidity" that's out there, etc. Yet, those hours that he spends are hours that he will never get back. Oscar Wilde stated that "youth is wasted on the young" - and this is another example. My son's life is passing him by as he spends time in a world of unreality - it's my generation's day dreaming taken to a potentially cataclysmic extreme. How can we get a generation to re-engage in their own lives and actually live them? How can we help them re-connect to each other? There was a fascinating article (in a recent Christian Century) on how little the current generation knows about the basics of connecting with another person on a date. There is research going on and classes being taught for young people to learn how to talk to one another. The world of texting, Twitter'ing, etc., has lead to a world of people who communicate in short-hand. They've forgotten (actually they've never realized) that technology is there to serve them, not the other way around. Religion has always shown another path - a path of being in the world but not of the world. In order to engage a generation that is not engaged in their own lives, it will take some truly revolutionary thinking. It will take short messages and chats and probably coffee (!) in order to hold their attention. It will take some research to show how the generation is not realizing its potential. It will take the older generations to re-engage in helping the younger among us find their way out from under the technology burden that we have created. Something to consider - something to do. Peace for the journey, Dan