1. The 2024 school year has come to an end for most (for some, next week) and with it, the sanity of parents everywhere. While kids rejoice at the free time that accompanies summer break, parents mourn the structure of academics and extracurricular activities that kept their children busy. What better way to grieve the lack of stability than to sign your child up for summer camp after summer camp after summer camp? The attempt to keep children entertained and moving 24/7 may be the reason that summer camps have become a 3.5 billion dollar industry (!). Jay Caspian Kang, for the New Yorker, is a self-proclaimed summer camp parent (much to his dismay):
Summer-camp mania feels, instead, like a much more typical corrosion of modern life. Although many of us have stopped believing the myths that places like tip and the bucolic summer camp tell us about the competition our children will face, we cannot stop sending our kids to them because we cannot conceive of an unscheduled moment. Nor can we explain why things have to be this way. This is just how kids grow up now, and we feel powerless to find an alternative because we cannot take the week off to even figure out what it might be. […]
The parents of the panicking class are reacting, in large part, to a necessary — and, ultimately, I think, refreshing — demystification. We do not have enough money to buy our kids real class mobility, and the more affordable avenues of academic or athletic striving no longer feel reliable. The striving has become unmoored from any sincerely held vision. I do not know why I’m sending Frankie to so many summer camps. I do not know why she has to play on the top competitive soccer teams. I do not know why she should enroll in our town’s version of Russian math next year. I do not know why she cannot spend at least a couple of weeks this summer doing absolutely nothing and learning to be bored. You can tell me that you understand exactly why your child does these things, but I probably won’t believe you. What we can agree upon, I suspect, is that neither you nor I will change, because neither of us knows how.
Summer camp used to be about buying disposable cameras to take sh*tty pictures of campfire s’mores and embarrassing portraits of your friends. Or taking the unwelcome swimming test to be able to go on the inflatable iceberg in the middle of the lake and worry over the possibility of snapping turtles biting your toes (um, hypothetically speaking, of course). Summer camp was useless when it came to achievements, academic or otherwise, and rightfully so. But it seems that some parents have moved on from traditional summer camps into speciality-focused camps that hone their child’s skills in math, science, sports, and more.
In his new book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt highlights the importance of free play when it comes to the biological, psychological, and cultural development of kids. His central claim focuses on pushing back against a phone-based childhood, but I think that what he has to say can also apply to these summer camp woes.
Gray defines “free play” as “activity that is freely chosen and directed by the participants and undertaken for its own sake, not consciously pursued to achieve ends that are distinct from the activity itself.” Physical play, outdoors and with other children of mixed ages, is the healthiest, most natural, most beneficial sort of play … When parents, teachers, and coaches get involved, it becomes less free, less playful, and less beneficial. Adults usually can’t stop themselves from directing and protecting. (Haidt, 52)
Perhaps letting summer be summer again could be instrumental for a younger generation who will eventually (and inevitably) become cognizant of the everyday pressures and expectations that adults experience. Maybe adults could also benefit from a week of useless but fun summer camp — anyone up for some swimming?
2. Summer camp isn’t the only thing that can’t be fun anymore. Apparently neither can watching sports. Why? Jerry Brewer, for the Washington Post, insists that political grievances have splintered American sports.
I used to have no doubt about the unifying superpower of sports — how they turn strangers into teammates and teammates into family, how they make community out of motley spectators, how they raise the curtains for societal progress. I used to believe it was an imperishable kind of magic. I don’t anymore. Or rather, I can’t. Division has seized too much control.
It is the embrace of these divides rather than the newness of them that spoils our ability to unite around anything, even the fun stuff. There is almost nothing fresh about the issues barricading us except for the commitment to be angry and inhuman, vindictive and regressive, insincere and obtuse. To feel threatened and become a threat in response. […]
“We’re in a moment where education has been politicized, where we’re not all receiving the same sort of news, where movies and theme parks aren’t happy, simple entertainment,” said Jackson, the Arizona State professor. “Sport becomes a potent, dangerous place for these battles to play. Sport makes them explicit. You can’t turn a blind eye in sporting spaces. The ideas held through society always play out most explicitly through the bodies of athletes.”
Professional sports may continue to fracture under the plight of political divides, but Alabama high school football coach Kelvis White won’t let anything get in the way of his team’s unity. White strives to not only make the game fun again, but also create a loving, grace-filled, and familial community amongst his athletes:
White has tried to build the most responsible space for his team. Without him imposing his political beliefs on the students, they have bonded while talking about life’s challenges. His message always comes back to a theme: Stay together. When the players discussed whether to protest, he demanded only that they make a group decision and stick with it. They decided against a pregame demonstration.
Their nickname is the Patriots, and they lived up to it — not because they obeyed anyone’s rules of behavior but because they supported each other.
“It’s a lot of good in this world — and a lot of evil, too, you know?” White said. “But we’ve just got to love each other, man. Sometimes we’re out here in 90-degree heat, drenched with sweat, just being brothers. No matter what you see on television, don’t judge a person. Let nothing get in the way of our unity.”
In a suburb of Huntsville, 11 miles from where the unity fractured, a coach holdson to a relic of a decayed dream. He would be wise to stash it somewhere safe.
3. The millennials are not alright. According to Amil Niazi for the Cut, older millennials are approaching (if not already in) the frightening time marked as the midlife crisis. A stereotypical midlife crisis involved a brand-new fancy sports car, new hair-do, and the five-stages of grief. These stereotypes, however, are not true to Niazi’s experience of a midlife crisis:
Today, the real crisis isn’t about mortality; it’s that our lives and stations are unchanged from when we were 30 — or, hell, even 20. It’s about a distinct lack of comfort, of resources. My dad was trying to escape the doldrums of midlife with blond hair; meanwhile, I have friends who can’t even escape a bad marriage because they can’t afford the rent in a new place by themselves, especially if they want to keep their kids in the same school.
For as long as there have been “trend stories” about millennials loving pricey avocado toast, there have been actual millennials sounding the alarm bell about how crippling student-loan debt, a punishing job market, and rapidly rising housing costs have diminished our ability to get a secure footing in our lives and actually start to plan for our futures. And now, we’re not exactly staring out the window of our country house fondly remembering our salad days. We’re still grinding it out, perennially worried about losing it all. […]
So while I do often ask myself, “What the f**k have I done with my life, and can I still survive out here doing what I do?,” the rub of midlife is that you do have so much more to lose. I don’t want to blow up my life and start from scratch. I just want to feel like the ground beneath my feet isn’t constantly shifting. So, like most of my generation who are used to this kind of precarity, I’ll just keep moving forward, making the best out of what I can. And let’s just hope I won’t be writing this same essay in another 20 years.
It appears that no matter the generation or stage of life, we are all struggling to keep it together. And just as everybody ages, everybody will also experience some sort of midlife crisis. The particulars may be different, but the basics remain the same: we are all anxious about the future’s uncertainty.
4. Next up is Kieran Setiya’s essay for the Atlantic on David Shoemaker’s new book, Wisecracks, and the role of comedy. Comedy’s greatest job, Shoemaker illustrates, is as a source of solidarity:
As Shoemaker contends, wisecracking can at times be a source of profound solidarity. When friends make fun of us for what would otherwise be embarrassing mistakes, failures, or foibles, they destigmatize them. When we mock a stereotype that others use for harm, we forge a connection that turns prejudice into subversive pleasure.
Setiya takes it a step further, writing that humor may help us overcome our suffering:
Humor offers more than just solidarity. It helps us cope with “the vicissitudes, difficulties, and absurdities of life” by changing our emotional relationship with them, Shoemaker writes. This is perhaps its deepest value and the one that I most cherish. It’s also the most mysterious. […]
When I think about the value of dark humor, I don’t think of distraction or detachment, or the possibility that nothing really matters, but of the alchemy by which the worst things we go through can be transmuted into laughter and therefore, momentarily, overcome. How can we take pleasure in what is terrible without cruelty or illusion, without pretending that it wasn’t so bad after all or that everything works out for the best? Intellectually, this puzzle may be insoluble. Emotionally, we seem to solve it, sometimes, when we joke about the unacceptable, turning the lead of suffering into the gold, or the fool’s gold, of humor.
We’ve written substantially on the site on the value of comedy over the years, but Sam Bush’s brilliant essay from earlier this month may take the cake:
Humor is used for a variety of reasons — as a distraction, as a weapon, as a way to cope — but it is also an instrument of hope. The famous Mark Twain quote, “Comedy is tragedy plus time” is enough to show that humor is hardly mere escapism. Comedy needs tragedy. Its very power is born out of recognizing how tragic life is. At its best, comedy does not mock or make light of tragedy, but helps rescue it from the clutches of despair.
5. Now, for actual kicks and giggles look no further than the Hard Times’ “Parasocial Relationship Much More Fulfilling Than Actual Relationship.”
Local woman Sarah Donnelly admitted that the parasocial relationship she shares with actor Kyle McLachlan through TikTok is exponentially more fulfilling than the real-life relationship she shares with her boyfriend of four years, sources confirmed. […]
McLachlan’s social media manager Darrel Rodriguez admits he purposely crafted his client’s online presence to win the hearts of women in disappointing relationships everywhere, maximizing his influence and re-igniting his career.
“I really like to showcase Kyle doing the absolute bare minimum,” said Rodriguez.
Oof. Haha.
The Daily Mash understands that our good deeds can sometimes be a cradle for resentment in “Letting someone with one item go in front of you: Good deeds you’ve got no sodding choice about.”
My sincerest condolences to all the youngest children out there who, indeed, act like youngest children (I’m the problem, it’s me). Here’s Reductress’ “Friend Assuming You’re a Youngest Child Kind of Offensive Somehow.”
6. And finally, a reflection on unanswered prayer by Wendy Kiyomi for Christianity Today:
Eventually I got tired of scrounging after silver linings. The plain fact was that the Lord had a flintiness about him. I wondered if I should be shouting at him, like Sonny in The Apostle, “I love you, Lord, but I am mad at you! I AM MAD AT YOU!”
But I didn’t have the energy. One angry scream, and my throat hurt.
And I wasn’t mad, exactly. God was beautiful, and I loved him. I just didn’t understand why he seemed so harsh, why he had apparently given me an impossible task and then pulled the rug out from under me. I thought I knew a little of what Moses felt when God forbade him from entering the Promised Land after all his years of service (Deut. 3:21–28).
“I can’t pray anymore,” I finally told my friend Annie. “The opposite of what I pray for keeps happening. I can’t muster the imagination. I can’t formulate the words.”
“There’s this idea that if you can’t pray, you’re far from God,” she replied. “But I think that when you can’t pray, you’re right there in the heart of God.”
The Lord was near. I knew that. I felt it in the inexplicably palpable belovedness of my soul — there was no way I could feel so alive and cherished except by God. But his nearness was explainable in another way, the way that poet Christian Wiman says is “God entering and understanding human suffering.”
When we endure suffering, Richard Foster writes, it prepares us to “enter into the anguish of others” in a way that brings healing. It becomes a ministry. Likewise, Henri Nouwen says in The Wounded Healer that our sufferings are a place where God unfurls his new creation. It’s the regenerative, redemptive way we catch glimpses of his kingdom reality.
Strays:
- Still thinking about Elizabeth Callen’s recent essay for Mbird, “Infinite Grace.”
- A psychologist over at Religion News Service explains why religious teens may be engaging in less risky behavior.
- Plough suggests praying for those annoying people in our lives.
- Howard Stern asks for forgiveness.
- Can’t wait for The Bear Season 3 to release on June 27th ft. the internet’s Irish princess, Ayo Edebiri:
While summer camps may be booming for the kids, camps are shutting down due to an inability to recruit staff and for the skyrocketing cost of insuring all the fun staff at camp that may hurt kids, which is pretty much everything. It’s getting to the point that to be financially viable, camps have to charge themselves out of reach of those parents that would likely benefit most from sending their kid(s) to camp.