Childhood is short and maturity is forever.
-Calvin
As a young adult, I am always hearing older people talk about life and how it's rough and tough and everyone needs to grow up and get into the work force. Life isn't about having fun, having philosophical conversations about movie plots, or driving somewhere with no idea what you're going to do. It's about graduating from high school and jumping into the monotony of a daily 8 to 5 boring job and staying there until you retire or die.
Older members of society talk about life after school as the "real world." It's as if the first 22 years of someone's life aren't really real while they are in school or they are just living in la-la land. No one really wants to take a young person seriously unless they have a conservative wardrobe, have the same ideas and convictions about politics, have written 500 checks, have fought in a war, or have had a "real" job for 10 years. A bunch of generalized boundaries have been set up by the older generation of this time we live in that make it hard to gain any respect as a person under 20. Why not pay attention to younger people for once and see what they have experienced and seen in this world?
I'm sure many of you have heard about the recent Napster developments in which Metallica is royally destroying a fan base. I'm sure they are very proud for banning 300,000 users from Napster. What are they thinking? I downloaded two songs by Creed, illegally of course, and now I own both of their cd's because of that. I say that any artist wanting to ban the distribution of music on Napster should think twice about its advertizing capacity.