Opinion Sur Joven

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, parents, 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 neighborhood.

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. Keep reading