Dear Diary, The Death and Resurrection of Youth<\/p>\n
Dear Diary, what is youth?\u00a0 An adage states, ‘youth is wasted on the young.’\u00a0 Is youth referring to energy gradually fading away as one ages?\u00a0 Where does such energy originate?\u00a0 Youth is hope; youth is the ability to believe in a positive future outcome.\u00a0 When we are young, we are introduced to all kinds of information, factual and fantasy.\u00a0 We start to see problems with the world as we understand it and offer ideas on how they could be addressed.\u00a0 Those older than us quash our ideas as untenable, and we go back to the drawing board.\u00a0 We repeat this process until the message received is the problem(s) is(are) unsolvable.\u00a0 The hope fades, and youth dies.\u00a0 Add personal trauma such as abuse or neglect, and youth may pass swiftly and potentially be gone forever.<\/p>\n
What feels like ages ago, I wrote, ‘Hope is the mechanism for meaning.’\u00a0 In our younger days, our hearts are filled with meaning and purpose for the world and everything in it.\u00a0 We have a clear idea of right and wrong, and the existence of so much wrong is confusing.\u00a0 It is mainly through uncontrollable tragedy, the triumph and persistence of wrong, that we lose hope;\u00a0 we stop assigning meaning to aspects of life.\u00a0 We ask questions to which we are unlikely to find a satisfying answer, often ‘why’ certain injustices occurred.\u00a0 The lack of actionable solutions is corrupting, and young people haven’t yet developed the depth of resiliency skills needed to persevere.\u00a0 The burden of understanding failures on individual and systemic levels is heavy.<\/p>\n
For some people, the story ends here.\u00a0 The hollowness left behind from our crushed childhood hopes was never replaced by anything positive.\u00a0 The pit of negativity festered and grew into a hateful adult who only made those around them suffer.\u00a0 Fortunately, not everyone succumbs forever like this;\u00a0 some people build themselves an emotional ladder and climb out of the pit carved out by society during their younger days.\u00a0 While feeling lost, jaded, and defeated is sadly typical, it does not have to be our inevitable destination.<\/p>\n
For many of us, our childhood dreams are well and truly dead.\u00a0 However, as living beings, we will form new ones.\u00a0 What happens when we begin to work towards a goal solely of our design?\u00a0 As a child, we are more shaped by external stimulus.\u00a0 We are responding to what we are confronted with rather than being proactive in our direction.\u00a0 When we begin to have small individual successes the meaning we invested into the goal is returned to us with interest.\u00a0 Achieving something meaningful, regardless of scale, inspires more meaningful action.\u00a0 Inspiration to accomplish something meaningful is another way of saying, ‘hopeful.’<\/p>\n
I disagree that ‘youth is wasted on the young.’ A positive outlook on the future and the drive to move in that direction must be cherished and nurtured, not extinguished.\u00a0 Failures are guaranteed along the path because we are imperfect.\u00a0 As such, it takes strength of character to fall and think, ‘that’s ok, it will be better next time.’\u00a0 It may be initially easier to have such a perspective when we are younger and have not experienced many failures yet.\u00a0 However, what about after we’ve had some of life’s tragedies thrown our way?\u00a0 To look forward and still think it will be better takes courage.\u00a0 To allow ourselves a level of vulnerability sufficient to invest hope, meaning, into life at the risk of failure (and pain) is admirable.\u00a0 Youth is the ability to do just this and is why we see the ‘young at heart’ regardless of physical age.\u00a0 Open your heart and invest in your life; you are worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Diary, The Death and Resurrection of Youth Dear Diary, what is youth?\u00a0 An adage states, ‘youth is wasted on the young.’\u00a0 Is youth referring to energy gradually fading away as one ages?\u00a0 Where does such energy originate?\u00a0 Youth is hope; youth is the ability to believe in a positive future outcome.\u00a0 When we are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[304],"tags":[315,174,168,323,322],"class_list":["post-28368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-diary","tag-315","tag-failure","tag-hope","tag-trauma","tag-vulnerability"],"yoast_head":"\n