A nice time in our passage on Earth, youth.
This is when the majority still focus their attention on many beautiful
things around us, believing, dreaming, letting their creativity flow, loving,
living so intensely.
Time to develop one’s own identity — increasingly
liberated from previous dependence —, cultivate ideals, look for originality,
assume responsibilities.
Sometimes one experiences a certain eccentricity,
a reactionary attitude or an irreverent or even opposing process. In some
cases, when a young person finds out he knows more, he mistakenly thinks
that he knows it all, or at least that he knows more than everyone else.
But this is all part of the construction and
development of a personality. When well-supported, it provides an appropriate
preparation to face life.
And this support can and should be done without
conflict between the generations. Why conflicts? Educators were young once,
therefore they know the eager desire for fulfilment that takes shape in
youth. So, there is no reason to affront others. Instead of this, they
just have to direct that excessive energy in a useful manner for the young
person and for the community. Instead of imposing anything, educators should
always try to win the hearts of the youth. Instead of doing it impetuously,
they should do it with the serenity of those who love truly and tolerantly.
Parents have no right to demand perfection
from their children, but they have the obligation to help them become perfect.
Because parents love their children, they want them to go farther than
they themselves did. So they support them, showing them what seems to be
the most appropriate way, the solution that they think is most balanced,
and explaining patiently why things happen , based on their longer experience
on earth. But they always let the young person make his own choices, even
if they are not the best ones.
When they act like this, they always find,
sooner or later, understanding, respect, admiration from those who feel
supported and loved. And who doesn’t like to feel like this?
Even the most rebellious, even those who have
a tendency to deviate from their way, they feel – maybe these more than
the others — they need to be supported and loved.
The best way to help them think clearly and
intelligently, to show them they need to correct themselves and help them
to feel willing to improve themselves, is to try to understand them, with
firm principles and tolerant attitudes.
It seems that there is no advantage to the
educator in assuming a position that is radical, tough, condescending or
even of complicity. He should always calmly remember the solution, the
way. But above all, he should be concerned with showing the young person
his own behaviour as an example, and allow him to follow “his own” way
and search for “his own” answers.
It is in our youth that we dream about the
most beautiful ways to follow in maturity and in the age. And how good
it is to dream...
The better a nation can prepare its youth,
giving them conditions to picture a better future, the stronger it will
be.
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