Dear Friend, I’ve spent a lot of time in bookstores and libraries this past week and I’ve had some time to reflect. My thesis: Young readers can understand and comprehend big ideas but in conveying said ideas, they are not quite as eloquent.

This isn’t a shocker to most of my more mature and/or older audience but as someone who is still considered a youth by most; I’ve had my eyes opened more recently to ideas I didn’t quite fully understand. This being one of them.

Eloquence is a skill. Speaking and/or writing with purpose. Conveying the exact meaning properly. It’s a skill that I am working on very much. I find that this is a skill. You are not born this way. To articulate ones manner in a way that your words come across effectively and with purpose is not something that can be inherited. You can of course learn it. Perhaps like me you grew up in an environment where people used the full manner of speech that they were capable and didn’t dumb down words for you. I had many teachers growing up that would catch themselves while they were talking to the class at large and would shorten or make things easier to understand, as is a teachers purpose; to make things easier to understand and package for students. But I, in becoming closer with teachers and professors, I often was spoken to plainly. As an equal.

It’s through this that I began to learn. But why was I, in my view, separate from my peers. I wasn’t truly, it’s just I gave the instructor more opportunities to be straight with me. I often cornered them after class/between classes and would ask them to expound upon what they were teaching.

So big ideas, concepts. What makes them easily accessible to younger readers? Easy. Movies and shows and games and books teach big concepts. A reader has the opportunity and duty and privilege to truly understand the art form and get the message. However, as is the human experience, you put the ideas in your own words. Ask a college student vs a highschooler to explain the nuances of Modern Prometheus to you. Now ask a middle schooler and a college graduate. I suggest that based on our societal constructs of age differentiation by way of school separates eloquence. Higher exposure to concepts while inevitably teach you them.

At this point people are either connecting the dots and understanding or they’ve been clenching their fist screaming “Why haven’t they learned this yet.” Simple. Growth.

Dear Friend, you will be alright.