I'd feel obligated to help the kid see what life can be; things I wish I was better at doing for myself. If I had the dough many of their parents have, I'd find ways to meet and introduce young Woolsworth or Buffy to inventors of things like that microwave machine that turns tires into fuel and carbon black. Carbon black is used in tire manufacture so that could go right back into more tires.
At one time I was intimately familiar with the workings of a tire manufacturing facility in NC. For various reasons my equipment proposal was not accepted, but I was young and inexperienced. The education and the experience gained in the process was worthwhile. Most likely I could have landed that account with what I knew later. Plus my design would have been a little different.
I've certainly spent much time in frivolous ways at every stage of my life, but I do think my time spent in that plant was of far more value than it would have been had I camped out to protest instead. And that's the real point.
It is great to let your views be known. I still say that doing so in a way that involves force over others in some way is over the line. I consider stopping traffic, clogging infrastructure and making work for others because of mess or vandalism, etc. a form of force. This is clearly where I part ways with most unions in their tactics.
But the real shame is that it is so easy to get a myopic view of life which limits one's chances of really experiencing the good things being a human being can bring. I consider things like loving a sport, being enamored with surfing or paragliding or any number of activities far more worthwhile than war, many forms of public service, and many other things considered holy by those who love mobs. Those activities are purely human and serve as a celebration of life and our creative nature.
Unless it has been enslaved and trained, you won't find a bear catching waves on a longboard, or sailing around the world, and zipping around like a flying squirrel in a glide suit. And even flying squirrels don't get to do what I've seen those guys do.
I think that helping a child learn to enjoy these things that are part of the joy of being is one of the best gifts anyone could give. I wish I hadn't had to spend my life trying to unlearn the opposite message. Even so, I know better. And I do appreciate what people can do.
Playing my excuse for music may be a sliver of that, and I cling to it because it is. In reality I would rather have been some kind of career athlete or be sailing through the sky like an insane rocket. No reason not to do both. It is just that the physical things are more my true nature than music or much else. Fortunately it often is kind of physical when I play. That is what kept me doing it, not how it sounds. Only how it felt on a good day.
At this time a lot of cool things would not be a good idea to try since I'm old and haven't spent my life working out.
It does make me a little sad to know what some kids are missing, and that it doesn't need to be like that. It is one problem I would not throw money at because that is not the real issue. People are simply being conditioned to believe life, humanity, and what matters are something other than what they are.
