Coming of age in a society like the one in which we currently live can be dejectedly traumatic and disempowering; especially once one arrives at the nitty gritty of what capitalism really entails, or when it dawns on one the stipulations behind climate change and how humans may have been able to prevent it had they been slightly less careless.
Today, young people grow in a world wherein it's almost faddish to be a cynic, wherein mockery involving the unlikelihood of one's success compared to another's unlikelihood of success is considered humorous, wherein hopelessness is nearly the only option.
We place insurmountable standards of success on our kids and when they don't rise to the occasion, we chastise them and assume "kids these days" don't care. With those sorts of assumptions, it's no wonder young people have become complacent with cynicism, with self-deprecation, with hopelessness.
To save the world, we must break out of this cycle and begin to empower young people by standing in solidarity with their ideas. We must create environments in which kids are encouraged to prosper and think "outside of the box." We must celebrate every small victory as if it's the last.
Future educators can help to ease the load of this process. Educators must deliberately nurture students, colleagues, and themselves through adversity in the form of cracks, knowing they must sustain the trauma of damaged petals along the way. Anger, stubbornness, or recklessness due to outside influences are merely reactions to adversity and must not condemn educators themselves hopeless in the pursuit of saving the world because hope in our kids and ourselves is required when growing roses in concrete.
If we lose hope in ourselves, how on earth are kids going to muster empowerment and hope within themselves when the very people who are meant to teach them are only capable of teaching hopelessness in the first place?
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