For millennia generations have come and gone. Immigrants,
emigrants, native born. Babies of love. Babies of hope. Babies without homes,
homelands or even parents. War babies, orphans, too. Mangled babies from
accidents, war and evil hands.
Scanning the news one realizes many births are in war torn
areas of the world. Yet they still happen. Always with a struggle the miracle
of birth remains; in war-torn areas the miracle is heightened by survival of
the newborn even for a few years.
The news cameras catch sights of kids running through bombed
out buildings, or straggling down streets riddled by poverty if not violence.
They peek out at the cameras and often smile! They even cavort for the
photographers and giggle their way through a ‘conversation’ with the camera
crew. They are friendly kids. You can see it in their eyes that they are
hopeful.
Of course we wonder how this can be. Were the situations
reversed, how would we carry ourselves? Would we sport a smile for the visitors
or would terror mark our faces? Would poverty be worn well on our face or would
worry lines and fear tattoo a grimace for eternity’s photo?
Switch the scene to a densely populated locale, say
something like India , Delhi perhaps? Or Bombay (Mumbai for the
modernist)? A nation of 1.252 billion people (2013) has urban streets and even
village paths teeming with people, mostly children. Nearly all of them
apparently happy nested in their homes, neighborhoods and family surrounds.
Giggling, darting, jumping and running, the kids are filled with spirit and
energy. Like they should be.
The same in most parts of tribal Africa
where villages bubble with happy energy from children. Of course there are
exceptions where extreme poverty, hunger and disease reign supreme. In those
trenches of horror and suffering kids may begin life in hope but soon
experience the opposite. They become the burden older people simply cannot
support any longer.
In America
and in any other economically advanced society, youth are our temple of the
future. We place our hopes and dreams in them so they can live better lives
than ours. We educate them, feed them, and doctor them so they are ready for
the future demands placed on them. We instill in them our hopes and dreams. The
question is have we pressed them too hard, raised expectations too great? Do
they feel hopeful and expectant? Or do defeat, worry and fear rule their
days?
Most youth I think are happy and adjusting to their
surroundings. They are loved and feel loved by their families. Of course there
are those who are poorly loved, even abused and thwarted. Some are so badly
abused they die. Often such deaths are horrible. We shudder at the thought.
That is our ethic demanding a response to horrors inflicted by others.
Such is the panoply of life for youth even in America .
Perhaps other nations do a better job raising their youth? Who knows for sure.
But we in our land know or ought to know. Why else do we have kids but to
continue the human race and provide progeny of our hopes and dreams?
We cannot live our kids’ lives. That truth forces two other
truths: first, our youth must forge their own tale of survival and prominence
into adulthood; we support and nurture but cannot live it for them; second,
they must struggle with the negative forces as we did to learn their roles; and
if they fail it is not our failure.
If they fail the tests of youth we will try and save them.
That is a given. And so will the institutions of our society attempt to save
them. But the saving is on the kids. They must do it on their own else they do
not learn important lessons.
I work with youth who have abused drugs and alcohol. At
first I wondered why they did this to themselves? I witnessed their disbelief
of wrongdoing. I saw them fighting for freedom to do as they wished. They
resisted parental controls, even court required controls. Eventually they went
along to just get through the ordeal. They harbored the hopes of getting back
to freedom to do as they wished.
The program surrounding them requires them to behave
differently than they would wish. In doing that, however, the hope is they will
glimpse a healthy role for them to follow. That role is not theirs by design;
it is ours, the adult world’s prescription to fix the kid’s behavior.
What if their behavior is natural? What if the abysses of
troubles they are embarked upon are what they ought to be experiencing? Perhaps
such are the tests youth must live through if they are to have the strength to
survive later tests. Survival of the fittest we ask? Perhaps this is a test of
that?
Some of the kids in our program sit silently observing the
actions of others in the room. These same quiet ones laugh at passing humor, go
along to get along but exit the program with passing assessments. I ask: if
they have silently acquiesced to what is expected, have they actually learned
anything they can use in the future? Maybe; maybe not. At least they ‘learned’
to get by.
Those kids who fight the system and the program exit it at
long last, later not sooner. But I wonder if they are the ones who have
actually learned something they can use throughout life?
I don’t posit these thoughts lightly. I’m concerned that
each of us be challenged by life so we can learn what mettle we have inside to
fashion survival tools. As much as I resent the arrogance of some of the kids,
I think I am seeing the nerve and stuff of power they have to make something of
their lives. That is a good thing.
I know the chaos of their feisty resistance to the desired
norms is frustrating. It is noisy and difficult to work with. Then again it is
not our lives they are working through. It is their own.
I hope our work provides them with the tools they will need.
Their future is not ours. We have our futures in hand. Today it is their turn
to find the future they want and expect. Or not! But then they will have their
own tools hard won to do battle with.
March 27, 2015
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