Who are the Role Models for the kids now?

Our kids are our most treasured assets. Okay, I don’t have kids. I am single, but I love kids. And I know that it takes extraordinary people to be able to shape and mould the young minds and personalities of the youth we see as virtually our own. In a way, they almost are our own. Obviously, they are not. Maybe we secretly like to think that we’d like the “Good Ones” to be our own. The kids who have somehow learned to be mature and responsible and teenagers who manage to defy the odds and develop the right attitude to life and everything. But what are we talking about here? Are we talking about what kids can do, and what they have – or are we just aspiring towards those qualities in kids? We seem to want our kids to have those qualities that will enable them to become upright well-adjusted adults. But those qualities have to come from somewhere. The question is – where? And where are the good role models for our kids? Are we those role models? Or are we lost in a useless dream, or stuck in some fairytale world of false expectations?

Is Steven Seagal a good role model for our sons? He puts all the wrongs of the world right, somehow. Yeah, I’m a big fan, like most. But is this real? Do our kids need to learn Aikido? Beating up the bad guys isn’t exactly what being a good role model is all about. Sigourney Weaver might be a good role model for girls under similar rules here. But is that a real role model? I have a cousin and he has a five year old kid who has this amazing desire to be a policeman when he grows up. Where did he ever get that idea? There are no police in the family, and yet, even his parents say they can see it happening. He just seems to be a very responsible kid, with an unusual wisdom about him. Another family I know have a clever daughter who wants to be a school teacher when she finishes school. She is a teenager and has impressive grades. But yet she feels that teaching others is the number one thing she wants to do in the whole world. She has no idea what a teacher gets for salary. That’s what both those kids have in common. Some dreams and ambitions have a peculiar blindness to them, an indifference or naive tendency. And yet it seems to make the dream stronger or more real somehow.

What about the child who wants to be the next Richard Branson? Or Donald Trump? Or Bill Gates or the next Steve Jobs? What about that girl who dreams of being a successful Brain Surgeon? Maybe she excels at Mathematics or Creative Writing and sees herself as a successful Scientist, Technician, Inventor, Programmer or Published Author or Poet? Or who wants to be a successful model, who wears lovely clothes or whatever for a living? Or that teen daughter who wants to act on the Stage or in Movies? Are there kids like that? How can we get our kids to end up being like that? What makes people become successful entrepreneurs? What can a parent do that can enable those teenagers we have to become successful individuals?

What do all the successful people in the world have that makes them what they are? And how can we, as responsible and concerned adults imbue these amazing kids to have those same qualities?

Let’s face it, some human beings are born talented, or born gifted, and they show some kind of talent from an early age, and everyone just knows they are gonna go far in life some day. But is the continuum of the human race one in which it hits some of us and bestows a quality or two in us, while also skipping some other people, leaving them with nothing or very little? Is that it? Is that the master plan life has for us? Holy crap. That’s a bit rough, isn’t it? Some of us leave the X Factor Stage in floods of tears of frustration and suicidal tendencies even, while a rare few seem to leave the stage with garlands, applause and a big fat music contract.

Actually, the successful candidates do have some qualities they all share. They all have passion. They have found something, maybe a few things, but something they are good at, and they work hard at it. The guy, who became the Director Orson Welles, was a multi-talented musician before he ever became an actor then Director. On the way to a brilliant music career, someone very close to him that he loved dearly died, and he gave up music completely, and went off and wanted to do something else. Drama, acting, and eventually Directing Citizen Kane while still in his 20’s. Prodigy, yes, he obviously was, but he had a passion for everything he did. Ella Fitzgerald the amazing African American Singer was born to sing and she did, and became famous all over the world. She had such passion for it, she wasn’t in it for the money. So if she wasn’t paid for it, she loved it so much – she would still do it anyway. And that is what all passionate people do.

Singer David Bowie had the dream to be a singer and a musical artist, and wanted to try different things musically and stylistically. He succeeded with a vengeance. Steve Jobs, the current genius boss at Apple Computers, when reinstated as CEO there for a second period in his life (having previously founded the company and having being fired by it too) agreed to act as interim CEO with no salary on condition that Apple would only give him a salary and permanent CEO status provided he turned around the companies fortunes. He created the Apple Imac. Apple never looked back. He got the job, and then created the Ipod, iTunes, the iPhone, and lord knows what else is coming down the track. He would never do anything as mad as that unless he had a burning passion for what he did. He is right out there on the edge, making stuff happen. There’s a role model if ever there was one.

When a firm employs people, it looks for candidates with passion, and they have ways of finding it. Clever questions, problems that need fixing, some crisis that reveals that quality somehow. Some obstacle. Some people respond to a challenge!

There are plenty of examples of people with passion. Take people who are poets, or who write. They write whether they get paid for it or not. Are people who do this insane? Or are they a creative miracle? I know another artist who is giving up his art because he can’t sell his art. Where is his passion? Where did it go? Or did it leave him at all? People who have a passion for what they do, will do it no matter what! They are self-starters, they are like robots almost, they program themselves to just that one thing – and they never stop doing it. Until they succeed.

So what are we saying here? Have we found the formula for Superhumans? There’s more to success than just passion. Passion is a love for something. It’s habitual. There is a personal dimension also, outside of that person. Kids will look to the most obvious people in their lives while growing up, for advice, for nurturing, for wisdom, for love, for reassurance, for guidance in what direction they need to go, for praise. Kids will look for nourishment, since they know what is good for them.

Some will not have good parents at all, and will have to fend for themselves, which is very hard on them. But a few will discover other people, similar to their parents, a kind of mentor friend who becomes almost a surrogate parent, but will be better than a parent in one or two ways, who will act as a catalyst in that person’s life. That mentor might also be a teacher of some kind.

Our role models are likely to be either parents, teachers or a boss or work mate of some kind. Or someone with an innate talent we like and we link up with them. We respect them and perhaps even revere them. If you go through at least the first two levels of education – you will increase your chances of happening upon a role model outside of family. Third level education increases your chances even more. Colleges and universities are hotbeds of innovation and talented people. Remember the story of the two guys behind Google. There were two. The Two guys behind Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Two is always better than one. There's a far better chance of succeeding.

We can be the role models for the next generation who are coming along. In these difficult (but not impossible) times, we need to nurture and help and guide these young people. They will need the skills and abilities to survive in the world they will inherit from us. We will succeed in becoming role models by being compassionate, caring, by being responsible (something that’s getting harder for some adults to be these days), by encouraging and giving the younger ones room to grow and discover things, to question things also, by praising good efforts and less praise of the person or the ego. We can be good role models by telling and showing that success takes hard work and commitment. All successful people have to work hard to achieve their dreams. So let's show them how we can be their role models, and start giving them something to believe in, besides fairy tale happy endings.

Copyright (c)2009 / 2010 / 2011 Cassy Mantis / Cheeky Girl.