Let's hope it changes

We must acknowledge the fact that in Lebanon the upcoming generation thinks that they can be in two places at one time. On a Friday night, the regular Lebanese has about 3 places to be at, and 7 people to see, we clearly have a problem with saying no to someone who wants to see us. Since it is obvious that it is practically impossible for us to achieve all of this, we’re bound to disappoint someone. But we think that it is better if we lie to them; tell them that our friend is travelling and we must see him, that we have a lot of studies, or the most ridiculous excuse of sickness. And every time as we hear their disappointment filled voices we swear to ourselves that it is the last time that you take on so many projects because you “care” about your friend and you don’t want to see him get hurt. But you’ll do it again, this very same cycle that will know no end. But the worst part is that every time you say that you are going to stop this profanity you’ll only be lying to yourself. But the question that I ask myself is why do we do this? And the best possible answer is that we categories our friends in a pyramidal pattern.  On the top are the few friends that we enjoy seeing the most, lower, there is the friends that we enjoy less, etc… And clearly on the bottom there is this mass of people that we once knew, in a time when our interests where the same and we hope to see some day, we have an unset date together that keeps on getting postponed to an undefined time. And the way this pyramid works is that if on a Friday night we are set to see a “friend” and later another “friend” from a higher layer of the pyramid contacts you, you’ll dump the person from the lower layer like a month old sock. It is unnecessary to say that a person can be on the top of your pyramid but you are in the middle of his. But not everyone is like that, there is a small minority who is honest and honors the power of a verbal agreement. Their patterns are circles; no one better than another.

The whole point of me babbling about this subject is to say that we are losing our honor; we talk the talk but we don’t walk the walk. That is sad because you can no longer trust anyone, not even the persons who are the closest to you. To put it in a nutshell, this generation has a commitment problem; if you currently cannot trust the word of your friend to make plans for Friday night, how in the future are you going to trust a stranger to make plans for your country?