Why I Like The Gilmore Girls

I was in law school when The Gilmore Girls came on the air. I was immediately hooked. Rory reminded me of me (overachiever) and Lorelei was very cool. They talked. They drank coffee together. They were family. It was heartwarming. I watched it religiously all through law school. Then once I was done with law school I became less of a TV watcher in general. So I stopped watching.

Well, as it happens Stephen and I were in the basement last night since we’ve had three straight days of mid-90's temperatures and the upstairs was sweltering. While I was flipping channels during the commercials I caught bits and pieces of the episode where Rory moves in with her grandparents, is sentenced in her criminal case and drops out of Yale. The whole episode focuses on the difficult decisions that each of them, Lorelei and Rory, have to make in order to keep moving forward in their lives. At one point Lorelei tells Luke that she knows that Rory has to make her own mistakes. No one can tell her what to do because she’s an adult and even if someone tried to tell her what to do, she wouldn’t listen.

Which brought to mind something that I often think about. How do people make the transition from child to adult? The simple answer is that we all make that transition in our own unique way. But I think that’s a bit of a cop-out. Especially since every single one of us could name at least one person who is technically an adult but mentally is still a child. Unable to make their own decisions, or, more often, unable to take responsibility and accept the consequences of those decisions.

And that brings to mind another thing that I often think about. In America, and I’m sure in countries the world over, parents shield their children from harm and danger to the best of their ability. Parents also shield their children from the bad consequences of their decisions, if at all possible. In addition, we, as a society, and parents especially, allow our kids, whether they be children or adolescents, to make very few decisions on their own. Why? Because we’re afraid that they will make the wrong decision and have to suffer bad or unpleasant consequences for their actions.

But it seems to me that making decisions, like anything else in life, is something that takes practice. In other words, if we never allow our children to make decisions then how do we expect them to make good decisions when they are full fledged adults? Obviously, something as difficult as good decision making (which encompasses so many things that we do all day every day of our lives) is going to take practice if we want our children, the future adults of this country, to be proficient at it.

This is just something that I’ve been thinking about. Feel free to comment and tell me what you think, especially if you have kids of your own.

Also, I’ve noticed that the dot on my Cluster Map up on Hudson Bay in Canada keeps getting bigger. Thanks for reading!