What Steve from Blues Clues is really telling us
So about that time Steve went off to college… #BluesClues25 pic.twitter.com/O8NOM2eRjy
— Nick Jr. (@nickjr) September 7, 2021
On Sep 7, 2021, Steve Burns, the original host of Blue's Clues, released a video explaining his departure from the show many millennials and Gen Z grew up with. For those like me, who feel as though they haven’t lived up to what they probably thought they should have, 20 years later, Steve’s message was kind of hard to hear. But in a good way. Like when your friends tell you they love you and you know they mean it.
There’s a reason so many of the memes going around juxtapose Steve’s line “And then look at you, and all you have done. And all you have accomplished.” with images of Dave Chapelle’s crack-addicted character Tyrone or other equally “unsuccessful” characters in the media. So many of us feel like complete failures. Growing up with the mantra that we could be whatever we wanted, many of us learned the hard lesson that life doesn’t always work out the way you want it to, or expect. To make matters worse, our parents, who had economic prosperity and opportunity, themselves were aware of this reality. Yet they still fed us something slightly different than their own experience, even when we would end up having to deal with a litany of unexpected global hardships that, I’m sure most Gen X-ers and Boomers would admit, are far more difficult challenges than the ones they faced at our age.
Still, there’s something noble about Steve reappearing to provide encouraging words to his old fans who he, a now college-educated man, surely realizes are adults. A man who, unlike so many others in the spotlight, was able to remove himself from it so fully that people could only speculate on where he had gone. Steve only returned to the spotlight to dispel rumors that worried fans, such as that he had died in a car accident or from a heroin overdose.
The old show brings back memories of a time when it was still possible to feel safe on an emotional level. Sure, a lot of us are physically safe at the moment, but the threat doom existentially looms around every corner. Whether it comes in the form of a quickly mutating, deadly virus or a semi-predictable but difficult to avoid weather calamity, we all feel the potential for doom. I, for one, worry that focusing on these things actually empowers them. And that is not to say that we should ignore them, either. They are real threats and there is a lot we can do to combat them, and we should.
But Steve tapped into something that I think a lot of us may have forgotten. That there is another power that we do have in terms of affecting the outcome of the future. A power that comes from inside ourselves. Steve is our older brother-dad who has sat us down after an accident and let us know he’s not mad. He’s not even disappointed. He’s aware that we feel that way towards ourselves, and he doesn’t think we should. And, honestly, should we? Have we, as a generation, done anything that bad? Outside of pointing to everybody else for our problems and, maybe, indulging a little more in the infinite entertainment options that have been thrust upon us than necessary, what have we done wrong? And for those of us who do feel like, maybe, we have committed some wrong-doings (who hasn’t), maybe it’s time to take a realistic look at ourselves and then give ourselves a break.
Once we have given ourselves that break, what else can we do? The reality is, it really is up to us, millennials and Gen Z, to make a difference. We are the future of this world. And though it feels like we are up against impossible odds, there are resources we can tap into to put ourselves and the rest of the world in a better position and do so simultaneously. Okay, so what do we do? Get to it already!
My probably-unqualified solution: Follow Steve’s steps. Get educated. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a lovely chart displaying the effect education has on earnings. Even just going to college and taking some classes without earning any type of degree correlates with an increase in earnings. And what about health? Virginia Commonwealth University has an article on the effect of education on health outcomes that shows, pretty clearly, how highly correlated education is with better health. Of course, one of the main reasons people believe there is a correlation here is due to the fact that healthcare is expensive and better jobs often come with better insurance plans. But, nonetheless, these correlations paint a strong picture.
But there’s another, unseen benefit to education that many people don’t realize until they’ve received it: confidence. Getting a professional level of education instills a confidence that is otherwise hard to obtain. Now, there are many ways to do this, you don’t necessarily have to go to college. However, I do think it is important to note that college is a place where you have an abundance of high quality information at your fingertips and that classes are generally a specifically tailored, streamlined source of that knowledge that can be far more effective than trying to learn on your own. Other forms of this quality of education include trade schools, some online courses and working under a mentor. Basically, getting the information straight from a knowledge expert over an extended period of time is extremely valuable.
Steve knew this and left a job that, according to celebrity net worth sites, was netting him millions of dollars. For school. He left to go to that thing we all hated growing up. But even he, on some level, knew it could be good for him. He probably assumed that it could open doors to life experiences that he had not yet had.
And to reiterate Steve’s point, this is not to bash on anybody who has not gone to college or pursued any other form of education. Going to school is hard. It’s competitive. It’s outrageously, unjustly expensive (and still, somehow, teachers are underpaid). But every little step matters. Every second you take to allow yourself to risk being bored for the sake of feeding your brain, you’re giving yourself a little bit more of a chance to improve your life and the life of those around you.
See, that’s the thing. Getting an education doesn’t just improve your life, it improves everybody’s life. In terms of direct impact, you’re more likely to contribute to society in whatever field you’ve been educated in. You also are more likely to spread the same knowledge you’ve attained.
And you might be wondering, how did this article about a Twitter video from Nick Jr become about education? Well, Blue’s Clues was an educational show. Steve had the opportunity to encourage us to learn as children, and he's come back around again to, subtly, encourage us one more time. Now, I can’t say for sure that he’s encouraging people to educate themselves, but I do know that he must have, on some level, whether he was pushed by executives to do so or not, wanted to empower his viewers. Because of that, I thought this would be a good opportunity to express one of the best ways I see for all of us to empower ourselves.
