Is it easy to be young?  Even this question is difficult to answer if  you really ought to answer with a yes and no!  Not an easy answer indeed; so let me explain why.  Earlier in life when at school I can look back and now realize that it was easy, but at the time I thought that the regime was highly disciplined, having to get up early, dress in my school uniform, walk what seemed miles to the bus stop in all weathers, spend all day at school with all that discipline, then come back making the journey home, have my tea and then spend hours on my homework.  If I was lucky I could finish in time to watch TV before being marched off to bed.  Another day gone.  Then  another one. Of course some days we played sports which was fun, even if it was just to get out of the classroom.

            But, as was explained to me many times, not only by my parents, but also my grandparents and  the teachers, all this hard work was to get me well educated so that I could follow a career.  Well life seem to get harder not easier at college, more work, more homework, more exams, less sports other than in my own time which ate into my homework or even sleep time.  After working so hard university came next.  A blessing for working hard.  Again, you could say this was easy and hard.  Easy because you were your own boss, you could go or not go to lectures, work hard or take it easy.  If you did not work hard then there would be trouble at home.  But all those distractions, boys, and lots of them take your pick, parties, fun, plenty to drink, you could smoke, we were now grown up adults would you believe, we thought so. Even drugs could be passed around at hardly any cost, but expensive when it came to the consequences.  You can understand how the youth of today are a mixed bag of individuals.  We have the minority which is working hard to be someone. The majority, who in their wisdom try to make it and succeed but end up in good jobs with a home, car, family just like my parents.  There are of course the few that don’t make it and follow the wrong road and end up being the undesirables.

        These are the few that get the most publicity, the ones we all to often hear about causing harm and destruction.  It becomes a national problem and laws are made that hinder the many because of the few.  Taking the wrong road is easy, easy by being lazy and not working hard in younger life. They become parents and their children have not the discipline they need, which makes the problem worse.  So, there is an element of the young society that need reforming, getting it into their brains that there is a better way of life, but that’s difficult.  Difficult because laziness has set in and hard to change.  Difficult because they need work and a sense of achievement, to find work is also hard in this day and age.  The few despise those that have made it and in these hard times and are finding it easy to award themselves great pay bonuses.  All this because there are too many choices?  Choices when we are young and do not really understand. Perhaps.  So how do you overcome the problem not easy, with legislation?  No, with education and a slight return to the old ways of doing things.  Whatever, difficult.

        Perhaps providing more opportunities for their leisure time could be part of the answer, this would also create more jobs, however, it requires money.  Where is this going to come from?  Government or the successful few!

      I now realize how lucky I have been in being brought up by parents who have indoctrinated me with the reasons for hard work and the discipline the gave me.  They have been like this because they know no different thanks to their parents, my grandparents.