Opinion Sur
Each new generation of youngsters emerges in the world as fate would have it. It is written that they will choose their own paths. Without a transition, they jumped into the open country, and now they wander carelessly on the prairie. The puppeteers caught them without trouble; tender youngsters have always been easy grass for prairie predators. They were spoken of mountains and were told that there were peaks at the top; and since they wanted to give it a shot, they supplied them with encapsulated heights. I was told that only in the herd and with supplements are loneliness, apathy, voids mitigated; that today’s fire burns stronger. Scoundrels who cash in on hope. Young people who cannot imagine blind alley tears. How to receive them and be received?
Each new generation of youngsters emerges in the world as fate would have it. They come with the potentiality of the freshness, the still un-charred courage, the talent of their young neurons and vocations, with the determination of unmeasured risks.
We have generated them, but they do not belong to us. We raised them the best we knew or could, but it is written that they will choose their own paths. We wanted to load their backpacks with what we thought were the bare essentials for a journey we hardly imagined.
They were showered with the technology we produced, and today they are teaching us how to operate it. We told them about the meaning of days, of that elusive sense that vanishes with one footstep and gets reaffirmed with another one, which appeases without noticing it the unending thirst for walking along and getting to know only what is new. Maybe they listened, but they were not mature enough to understand. And off they went.
As they turned the corner, they bumped into sudden freedom in an unprotected neighbourhood, just as it happened to us, only that this time, the deceits were of another kind, and different the puppeteers.
They started out with the impetus of those who have just peeled off the family wrapping, as it has always happened (we remember, don’t we?). They darted out bearing their own anguishes and fears, their bruises and abandonment, their cell phones and text messages, connected by their navels to internet, rushed, impatient with our impatience. They agilely jumped fences that were one time very hard to leave behind. Without transition they found themselves in open country. Breathing stormy sleepless nights, dampened with adrenalin, vulnerable to risks. The puppeteers caught them without trouble; tender youngsters have always been easy grass for prairie predators.
They showed them digital mountains and told them that there were peaks at the top. And since they wanted to give it a shot, they supplied them with encapsulated heights. Want to have a blast? Here goes instant imposture. Do you want to be part of the herd? Get this and join it at ease. Do you need some more today, tomorrow, on weekends? Take, snort, booze. Have you discovered your new body that is no longer of a kid and don’t know how to use it? Uncover, show, and let’s jump to the rodeo; there you don’t have to ask for permission.
No authorization is required to wander about the prairie; you only need to strike a pose, stretch your hand and compulsively aspire to achieve quick happiness. What is the point in working hard? What imbecile ever thought of beatifying effort? If everything gets ready with dope, booze, hugging with friends we think are solid because they say they’ll be on our side in every situation, always. They are unaware of street treacheries, group oblivions, herd indifference, puppeteers’ abuse.
They are surrounded by idleness and immediacy. Why postponing a pleasure when we have a la carte hedonism, packed in little pouches or to swallow in one-and-a-half century gulps? Now is the motto; like instant coffee, instant communication, instant relationships, instant nude. You unbridle at ease, you feel more grown-up than those stupid adults, and you spend the night waiting for the dawn to come while morons are sleeping. Then you return dragging your feet home, all night out imagining you are happy, although right away, in spite of what you have ingested and drunk, something inside of you says that is not enough, that you are all porous, that you’ll need to refill as you lost in minutes what took you hours to fill. And if you are having a great time, where does this tickling of dissatisfaction that goes with you everywhere come from? (Or that is not so?). You ended up smiling with anyone (isn’t that what you wanted?). You did swallow risk, and your little heart got wrinkled for a few hours (don’t give me that hurting-soul crap).
I wanted to understand and asked.1 I was told that only in the herd and with supplements are loneliness, apathy, voids mitigated. As to the rest, they watch it pass by from the stands, but they don’t feel it. Strong shakes are those they rent and there are not views for another course or the futility of the present one. It is better to muzzle one’s bafflement and borrow other people’s guffaw; because if I cry or do not understand, I’m a kid whom nobody takes seriously. You know that things that can destroy you are in your hands, and that nobody can “catch” you because parents don’t even know about it. If they found out too soon, the fun would be over, but it takes them some time to realize, and when they finally butt in, the new culture and the arguments for advocating and justifying it have already settled in. Today’s fire burns stronger.
Puppeteers dance as if they were coordinated; they profit from deceit and shrivel youngsters. They throw the stone and hide the hand. Some of them get away with it. They are the drug kingpins and their protective shield of accomplices; the cultural spreaders of nonsense, of emptiness, of the misleading message in certain ads; they are the ones who, from the media, introduce the paralyzing “normalcy”, the detours, the siren songs that kidnap youth imaginary and anoint transgression and alienation.
The dirty job is done by neighbourhood dealers; discos that set up the stage; corner shops that camouflage alcohol and sell banned substances to minors. It’s done by parents who condone, do not wonder, are either astonished or not there.
The journalist writes, “Since four or five years ago, cocaine base paste, which before was just mere chemical waste from cocaine, has turned into a much-sought-after merchandise whose consumption has become massive in marginalized areas. (…) First, its users become euphoric, then “fissured”; it does not take long till it turns them into addicts. Soon they enter a phase of hallucination, paranoia, and wild aggressions. They are known as the living dead. They are like vampires of an elixir that is mixed with metal shavings and ash, which is concocted in holed cans, and leads to brain death in six months. The so-called “latita” (little can) makes them erratic and violent, and the desperation to get money turns them into voracious assassins”.2 He caps his story picturing the death street parish priest walking the aisles of his labyrinth and, heartbroken, he finishes with a simple, “What a stubborn priest. He just can’t surrender.”
Once I had loaded as much as my anguish could bear, I thought; I thought, how are we going to get out of this morass (because if we stay there, we will sink more and more); how can we stretch our hand to this wonderful, victimized youth? We cannot abandon them; don’t have the guts to do that. I looked the other side as long as I could. Today, the puppets’ fake laughs fill me with sorrow, and the puppeteers’ sarcasm infuriates me. Youngsters that want to convince themselves that they are at the highest, cannot imagine the blind alley tears. Scoundrels that cash in on hope.
I thought about systemic plans and actions –and I am sure there must be some- because this is the way I think and understand reality. Then I looked at my hands and wondered what they have done. I recognized mothers who fight in their neighbourhoods for their children or, having lost them, for other people’s children; priests, pastors, rabbis in slums and inner city corners; social movements; aid organizations; honest police officers, not the other ones; decent prosecutors, judges, and public servants, not the other corrupt ones; all those dried up tears. There is much more to be done; parents, friends, significant others.
It is the daily living what we must open further for youngsters. Listen to them in order to understand rather than preach, learn from them so that we can find out how to help. It is always painful to admit that I, not only kids, have to change; that I cannot talk to them from the truth but, instead, I must do that from a common search, me as an adult but with their own codes and imaginaries. Accept that each one endeavours to forge his identity, seeks to stand on his own.
Is it that the clean up could be addressed with the kids’ help? Will they be capable of rebuilding their groups, leaving predators behind, finding themselves in the twilight? Would they be able to accept help from those who go all-out for them, not sinking into areas of greater risk, protecting themselves from the ever-merciless puppeteers, re-emerging young and no longer a pitiful puppet?
How to share this with youngsters of our neighbourhood, with victims of our global village? How can we receive them, and be received? How can we hug each other strongly? Let’s hope we can and—just as that advanced one— be as stubborn as it is needed, not knowing how to surrender.
