We’ve had our grandkids for two days so we’re right up against the past and present and future in any given moment. It’s really so bizarre.

They’re 12 & 9. They wanted to see the Mario Brothers movie, which included human sacrifice, and basically an intro to virtual reality. At the very end some talking blob told the kids he hoped they enjoyed the show but now they could leave and go back to their meaningless lives. I kid you not.

So, we took them on a nature walk afterwords and they were kind of unimpressed. I picked up a huge handful of Spanish Moss that had fallen off a tree. It’s really soft stuff—birds love it for their nests, and told them to hold it and see how amazing it is, created by nature. “Nature is great, because like us, it is real,” I told them. “It’s actually alive.”

Actually alive.

So much of their lives fails to be real anymore.

Kids these days have so much. Buying them an ice cream is just another day in the life for them. When I was a kid, we went out to dinner once a year. Ice cream was a serious treat. I feel like their whole life is a treat. And they eat out so often, if the food I make doesn’t taste like Chipotle or DQ, they don’t know what to do.

I don’t know how we impart meaning in our children’s lives. We passed some live oak trees on our walk and I told them our American forefathers used those trees because their wood is among the hardest in nature. I wonder if they’ll ever learn American history. I doubt it.

Trying to be upbeat about the future, but between little Mario figures being sacrificed to the Gods today, and a fucking blob telling my grandkids their lives are meaningless… I just can’t imagine the future at all. A good one anyway. Feeling kind of depressed after spending the day with them.

How do parents raise kids in this day no age? How do you do it?