I love that, but I can understand why it's so hard for a lot of school kids to believe it (especially if their parents are joining in making them outcasts). It's so hard for many of them to understand that what they're experiencing today is only temporary, their immediate reality overrides possible future realities (or even how malleable the current one is), and they probably don't have much to contrast with. If anything, they think it's only going to get worse as a bunch of egotistical and frequently narcissistic adults tell them how good the young whippersnappers have it and how spoiled the kids are who are in for a rude awakening when they enter the "real world" (as people have done for thousands of years).
To make it even worse, those who defy their circumstances and try to float to the top can sometimes receive the worst abuse. Stephen King once shared a horrific real life incident of a girl mercilessly bullied who tried to not let it get her down, started dressing better and being more social, and the kids at her school DESTROYED her in outrage over her trying to be something other than a turd for them to kick, and that was the inspiration for Carrie.
And no matter your age is so much easier to fall than to rise.
Don't get me wrong, I loved that vid and think it can and will be inspirational to many, but I can also understand why it would receive contempt as being a vid of clueless platitudes from others, especially kids who never learned to believe in themselves in the first place.
Honestly, I find the whole self esteem, "you are beautiful" sentiment a little gross. What's all this holding up cards and not talking crap? What happened to the good ol' days when kids let their sadness fester into a diseased black mass of internal decay that could only be assuaged with liquor and Bukowski poems?
It all feels very glib and superficial to me; not to mention there's a creepy culty kind of feel to it all. I admit, my heart is stone and I stopped being able to feel joy a long time ago, but am I the only one that gets a sickish kind of feeling with this stuff?
If it makes you feel better then there's the real possibility that the kids who held up cards with writing on them (which could be seen as performance art and a type of poetry) WERE drunk when they did it. :tongue:
And I have heard "you are special" spiels that do come off as new age crap and the like (sometimes just a "get over it so I don't have to deal with" dressed up in psychological jargon that's actually meant to sweep the problem under the rug), but this vid isn't one of them, partially because they admit it's not easy. I like songs like that (and Love Me or Hate Me, Fighter, and others about getting stronger instead of breaking) because, in part, I relate to them. I got reasons to think why I can that a lot of kids (and the people those kids grew into) don't have, but I don't feel like sharing them at the moment.
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