Over at his blog, John Mac tells the story of a Pinay girl named Samantha who's 18 and supposedly studying for a degree in human-resources management. HR was John's home field for years, so you'd think he'd be the perfect person to talk to: he's someone with real-world experience, after all, right? What a godsend for Samantha! In theory, yes, this is all true, but after Samantha promised to meet John for lunch so that John could sound her out, she bagged and stood John up. That, to my mind, is a very little-girl thing to do: to waste John's time and effort by not showing up for what could have been a very productive, very educational session. In my comment to John's post, I predicted that Samantha would be pregnant with her third kid by age 25, and she'd be begging some Western sugar daddy for money while giving him some sob story about her hard life, despite it being the life she chose for herself through a series of poor decisions. John has written a lot about the situation of young women in the Philippines, and at first, I think I was inclined to be fairly sympathetic. The country isn't rich, after all; life can be hard there. But as I read story after story about these young women, a pattern began to emerge, and these days, I no longer feel any great sympathy for these women, all of whom have the choice to live better lives, and most of whom end up trying the shortcut route—after stupidly getting pregnant and having several kids—of hooking up with a sugar daddy who is to help them out of the hole they put themselves in.
Stateside—and I won't name names so I can be a little harsh in this assessment—I have a friend (Friend 1) whose high-school-age son claims to be interested in learning about cybercrime. I happen to have another friend (Friend 2) whose very job is fighting cybercrime, so I offered to put Friend 2 in contact with Friend 1's son so they could talk. Well, Friend 1 told me he talked to his son about this, and the son got all sulky and didn't want to meet with Friend 2. A golden opportunity was plopped right into the boy's lap, and the boy rejected it. This is all kinds of stupid, but several things are possible: (1) the boy, being a mere yoot, doesn't really know what he wants. He talks a good game about wanting to learn about cybercrime, but in reality, he doesn't have a single clue what he really wants to do in life. I don't know; I haven't delved into the kid's psyche. (2) The boy sincerely wants to get into cybercrime, but he hates the idea of a handout. I actually understand this position because I've rejected handouts from my mother before. I recall some discussion about wanting to get into acting or something, and Mom said she knew someone and could put me in contact with him, and I got all sulky and rejected her offer—not because I was insincere about acting, but because I hadn't done the work myself to garner that contact. It felt unearned, and as stupid as it sounds, I felt disempowered, as if Mom had somehow "gone over my head" to find that opportunity. With the wisdom of age, I now realize how abysmally stupid such thinking is, and how different my life might be right now had I had the wisdom to accept Mom's offer. But part of growing up is fucking up. That's a harsh truth, but there we are. A good portion of our lives gets squandered through wasted motion, poor decisions, and general fumbling about when the solution to our problems is staring us right—in—the—face.
Yes... youth is definitely wasted on the young, but what can you do but let the youth make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons (if they're self-aware enough to learn)?
I'm reminded of the old, humorous proverb:
When I was young, I was embarrassed by how little my parents knew. When I got older, I was shocked by how much they had learned.
Everyone has to find their own path in life. We can call out "this way!" all we want, but not everyone is willing to heed that guidance. It does seem sad that so many young women here choose a pathway to disaster. I don't claim to understand it.
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