Generation Today

One of the reasons why I love teaching is that I am more comfortable with the young generation than with adults.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I haven’t really grown up.  I remain young at heart.  I still nurture youthful dreams and ideals.  I still hope for a better world and believe that it is possible to create such a world, a world in which people will be more sensible and sensitive.  My cynicism belongs to the adult part of my being.

The present edition of IndiSpire asks the following question: 

 My experience is that the young people embrace privacy out of helplessness.  It’s not that they wish to be confined to their private spaces; it’s that they don’t find people in whom they can confide fearlessly.  I have had innumerable experiences of youngsters wanting to spend time with me discussing their personal problems.  My regret has been that I couldn’t afford to give them the time they deserved. 

Ravi Zacharias said in one of his books that in the 1950s children lost their innocence, in the 60s their authority, in the 70s their love, 80s their hope, 90s their power to reason, and in the new millennium the children woke up and found out that they had lost their imagination. 

Zacharias attributes this condition to the violence and perversion that has become endemic.  I think there are other reasons too: people are too busy to give time to their children, in addition to the predominance of the social media and other things that keep youngsters pivoted to their mobile phones or other gadgets. 

They are searching for something genuine in those things: social media and the gadgets.  There is so much counterfeit in our world that the youngsters are confused.  The youngsters want genuineness.  They see that everything from the food they consume to the god they are taught to worship is contaminated.  They search for authenticity.  They can identify the authentic with the dexterity of a connoisseur.  You can’t bluff them.  Once they know that you are genuine they shed inhibitions.  And they have infinite questions to ask. 

So, to answer the IndiSpire question: yes, many things have changed. The world is not what it was twenty years ago.  The world confuses the young and they search for answers to a lot of questions.  It is because the adults are incapable of or unwilling to provide the answers that the youngsters go into the privacy of their little spaces and continue the search in many wrong places.  The answers are important to them.  If you can provide the answers, you will find the youngsters coming out of their little spaces.  I guarantee this.