The restless and critical youth

ONE of the biggest challenges of schools, and even before the schools, the family, the parents especially, is how to deal with young people who because of current world conditions are increasingly restless and critical of just about anything.

A lot of complaints and laments come my way from both parents and teachers who are finding it harder to deal with their children and students these days. They say the young ones seem to be living in a completely different world that’s almost impossible for them to enter.

I’m sure that the unavoidable generation gap is getting more complicated precisely because of the many developments sprouting up in the world today, and many of them are competing and conflicting with each other.

This situation obviously leaves many young people confounded, not knowing how to prioritize things, since they clearly do not know many things yet, like the proper values and principles to follow in life, and their very own selves—their strengths and weaknesses.

They often are simply guided by what they call as “what comes naturally,” which at a closer look is none other than simply following the impulses of the flesh and the logic of the world. They are at the mercy of their emotions and the fads and trends around without knowing their proper foundation and objective.

They don’t realize that the emotions and the worldly fads and trends need to be purified precisely because they are often products of our weakened and wounded nature that gives greater stress to the external over the internal, the material over the spiritual, appearance over substance, the passing over the permanent.

The complicating thing about all this is that today’s youth are exposed to a lot of fascinating novelties, info and data from different sources—media, cyberspace, cults and sects, etc.—that reinforce their views and opinions about practically anything. They learn how to defend themselves relatively well. They can answer back.

In short, there’s a tendency for them to bypass the natural authority of parents and teachers. They can be guided only by their own selves, to the point that they think this attitude is precisely the very expression of freedom. In short, they become easy prey to the sweet poison of presumption.

In the face of all this, we should not lose hope. There’s always hope. Truth, goodness and beauty in the end can never lose. It’s true that the way to them may be strewn with difficulties, but a way to them there always is.

And that is to keep our faith and hope in God burning, and made to impact precisely on the concrete situations and challenges of our life, and not kept to freeze in some holy place or moment of our life detached from our flowing real time.

Truth is all these difficulties and challenges are calls for us to grow more mature as persons and children of God, furthering our virtues and our faith and love for God and everybody else. We should respond to these calls as valiantly as possible, never allowing ourselves to be dominated by fears and doubts.

We cannot deny the fact that there’s actually nothing new under the sun. In spite of whatever, we are still creatures of God, children of his, created in his image and likeness and made to participate in his very own life not only in eternity, but also even here and now.

We cannot deny the fact that deep within one’s heart and soul still flickers the natural longing for God. Even if the flame is reduced to embers, the fire for God and for everything that leads to him can still be recovered and made to roar.

This is the challenge of the parents and teachers. It is how to reach that part of the heart and soul of the youth and stir it into vibrant life with God and with everybody else.

For this, I suppose, we have use all the means available, the spiritual and supernatural, the old and the new, the natural and human. We need to do a lot of prayers, of making sacrifices, of going to the sacraments.

We need to spend time with the youth, knowing them thoroughly to the point of being familiar with the way they think and react to things, and motivating them, giving them consistently good example, always showing affection and understanding even if we have to give indications, suggestions or even corrections.

If they really like and love their parents and teachers because of the way we treat them, then victory is just assured.