The Grouch

The Grouch

The song starts with the opening lyrics “I was a young boy that had big plans, and now I’m just a shitty old man...”. It was one of my favourite songs from Greenday’s seminal classic album Nimrod. Decades later when I revisited it did I now became the old man in the song. Little did I know when I first heard this song that I’d be the grouch. And you know what? I don’t mind it anymore.

Time has thought me that we are perpetually changing and that what we were once doesn’t reflect the person that we become. Experiences, time, knowledge helps to change and mould us to who we are and who we want to be. We choose what we want to see, hear and know and we choose who we want to be in our eyes and what the world sees us to be. It is a choice and not amount of genetics or media can directly change us but it is us that defines who we want to be.

40 decades later I feel that in some sense I am the grouch and yet I am more than that. I feel that I am at the best place I have been in a long time. Yeah of course things can be better but today I have a sense of independence that I am clear in what I want what I see things. I am stronger in my opinions and beliefs and that I am open to understanding the values and opinions of others more openly than I have ever been. 

In this day and age where everyone seems to be enraged over something and where the gulf that separated us becomes wider that it becomes a chasm devoid of objectivity and reason. Where people hold steadfast to their opinions and ideologies that they can’t see what makes us different is also what makes us able to come together in the first place. Where the values of peace and understanding have been forgotten and replaced by tribes drawing a line in the sand.

I stand in the middle neither accepting one side or the other as the absolute truth as the right way to live to see things to treat others. Age and experience has thought me that our values and beliefs are our own and rather than to change others or vilify them, we should understand their thoughts, concerns and fear. Neither liberalistic or conservative ideas alone can steer us to a better future. These thoughts and ideas are born and grew from experience, beliefs, traditions environments and myriad of other factors that make each of us who we are. Nobody wants to have someone’s else’s thoughts and beliefs shoved down our throats but we cannot dismiss them as mere lies or “crazy talk” just because it disagrees with our point of view. 

Accepting only one point of view as fact or certainty is detrimental to one’s growth. We were always thought to accept others as what they are and this should extend to their point of views beliefs and even alignments. If we are to grow as a person, a nation or as a people we have to be accepting of others opinions even if it goes against our thoughts and ideas. It should foster discussion and empathy.

I may be the grouch but at the very least I can be an understanding and empathic one.