Getting Away with Everything: Getting Away with Nothing

The real source of instability in people's lives: no boundaries, no consistency.

More kids these days are going to school from broken homes where the parents are just as childish, not child-like, and who only mete out love and direction based on the moods they are in.

The arbitrary nature of discipline in many children's homes has stunted them considerably.

Then kids go to school, where teachers are hamstrung from holding students accountable, and the administrators are more worried about lawsuits and losing attendance money.

Students who get away with everything in the end get away with nothing.

No one gets away with miscreant or deviant behavior for long.

Studies have shown that children with over-indulgent parents suffer more accidents and trauma than those children who receive discipline when they misbehave or break the rules outlined for them. No matter what we think of ourselves, no matter how much we get away with in the eyes of the world, we have a conscience which does not quiet itself or calm down easily. Young children grow up into sullen and dampened adolescents, then into challenged adults who will punish themselves, often unconsciously. Because they have gotten away with so much as youth, that does not mean that an arbitrary world exists outside of the four walls of home and school. The "real world", which does not exist in many homes and almost every public school, is ruthless and exacting, refusing to let anyone get away with anything. A business will fail if it fails to cater to customers. A marriage will fail if a man or woman fail to respect and uphold their vows. A man or woman will fail and then give up when they realize that the handouts of easy-going and complaisant authority figures have run dry, that the boss, the neighbor, the coworker, every one in the world expects everyone else to play with some sense of self and security.

The whole mess is shameful. The tough teachers are the ones who really care about their students, and the tough parents, those who do not seek the approval of their children, are doing their children a service, even if the kids hate their elders early on!

I have witnessed the terrible effects of children who get away with everything. They are insecure and rebellious, content to mock and rail at everything. They walk all over authority, fighting for everything and beating down as many people who get in their way because they know nothing but offense and opposition as a means to achieving anything in this life.

The bondage of shame that weighs on youth who get away with everything is also the real tragedy. II wonder how many young charges at Los Padrinos had wished that someone would have pushed them to the wall instead of letting them gang-bang, break the law, then get arrested. To this day, I shiver with disgust when I recall how some probation officers were  more invested in being the juvenile offenders' friend instead of the firm father figure that many of them really needed.

Kids who get away with everything get away with nothing. Teachers who pass students through a class because they have no authority to hold students accountable for their grades and their demeanor do them no favors. More faculty and staff are content to let students "get by" because they do not want to put up with a failing student for another year. How many students are graduating year after year with D's that should have been F's, but received a promotion because the school district wanted to inflate graduation rates?

When students who have coasted through public school meet the private sector, then they will long for the same shelter of getting away with everything, because from that point on they will get away with nothing.

The students who mock and harass their teachers learn nothing but a heady contempt for authority, one which will impoverish their opportunities and incarcerate their growth, whether physically or academically. The students who harass their parents face jail; they have no other trend or tradition to follow but the law of the jungle, kill or be killed. Men and women are not called to live like animals who must scream and scheme their way through life, but for a child who has gotten away with everything while growing up, he knows no other legacy than accommodation, one which the world at large will not accommodate.

I am not gratified to know and believe that those students who harmed me greatly in years past are not getting away with anything. The burden of guilt and condemnation which weighs on irascible youth produces an irritable and restless adulthood, where the moods  of the man matter than a mission and a purpose beyond himself. There is no life for a person who has gotten away with everything, because in the end he gets away with nothing, and has nothing to show for all of his getting.