I’ve seen several pieces in print and on various TV news outlets recently about "the new spring break" – college kids heading off for a week to drink ’til they puke, hook up indiscriminately, flash their…oh, wait, that’s the OLD spring break.
The new spring break involves volunteering, doing something like building a Habitat for Humanity house or other community support work.
Reading between the lines here – and I admit to wearing glasses – I seem to intuit a move away from the endless navel-gazing of "self-esteem" and, at long last, into the higher awareness of "self-respect". Hard to develop self-respect if one repeatedly wakes up hung over and naked – particularly hung over, naked and in bed with someone whose name you don’t know. Which is, I’m afraid, a common remembrance for any of us who participated in an old-school spring break. Back inna day.
Aggrandized self-esteem allows one to excuse just about any sort of behavior. Attempts to say anything to the boy behaving badly or girl gone wild fall on deaf ears, since they see no error in any choice they make.
Give that kid some self-respect, though, and they’re likely to avoid the drunken hook-up before it even becomes possible…perhaps there’s hope for humanity after all.
