Hey, what time is it?
Well, it’s the Anthropocene baby.
That’s what they’re calling it.
That means that we’re the centre of it all.
That means that we got our spirit prints on everything.
And that means that wherever we go, there we are.
We can’t get away from us.
That’s what time it is.
You know, there are kids on your news feed.
They are on the steps of your city hall.
And they are at your UN.
“You have stolen our future.”
That’s what they’re saying.
You understand it?
You understand, don’t you?
They’re pretty sure that no one else knows the sky is falling.
Just them.
And it’s turning them inside out.
“Be prepared to stop.”
That’s what the sign said.
But it didn’t happen though.
So the sign’s gonna have to change.
“Be prepared to be stopped!”
We haven’t got it right.
That’s what made their world. We’re their fate.
That’s how it seems.
Now, if you’re over 45, you grew up with the idea that almost anything is possible.
If it was in the air. If you could picture it, you could do it.
Everything’s possible still, maybe.
But most of those things, there not likely now.
That’s how it is.
We’re going through it.
The kids will not submit to the scrutiny of their seniors any more.
You want to get a whiff of it all.
You’re gonna have to try this.
No more sitting across from them,
making them the object of your inquiry,
just another moral problem for you to solve.
You’re gonna have to move that chair until you are 45 degrees from them.
And you will not see them directly, clearly anymore.
But you might begin to see them truly.
Look off into the middle distance now and see if you can see the world that they see.
Not see if you can see things their way.
It’s not them, not anymore.
It’s what they’re seeing.
You’ll be floored by how much it will take.
How much courage to see it, just to let it in.
Young People they are another country.
That’s what time it is.
Stephen Jenkinson
Orphan Wisdom is the home of Stephen Jenkinson’s writing and teaching work. Orphan Wisdom is a teaching house for the skills of deep living and making human culture. It is a redemptive project that comes from where we come from. It is rooted in knowing history, being claimed by ancestry, working for a time we won’t see.