Young people who waste their youth

"Youth is wasted on the young"... is a popular saying usually quoted by adults, about how young people waste their youth. Youth is the time when the body and mind are at their full potential but usually lack the wisdom, motivation and willpower to manage it. It is a case of saying, "God gives nuts to those who have no teeth and teeth to those who have no nuts"; when there is energy there is no wisdom, when wisdom comes the energy is gone...

It is true that we all learn from our mistakes, but life is so short that it is better to learn from the mistakes of others as well, because there is not enough time to make all the mistakes ourselves and learn the lessons, we need from them... In my opinion, there are three dilemmas that young people have to face and the choices they make regarding them will affect the rest of their lives.

Hormones versus mind
The explosion of hormones that the young body is subjected to is very intense and teenagers feel that their bodies are demanding activities and actions from them.  Insatiable consumers of audiovisual gadgets, cellphones, video games, television, computers, and movies. Young people favor sensory and emotional experiences to the detriment of mental and rational activities.
 
The body, with its demands, governs the mind and not the other way around; their identities, personal and social, are not built on rational values or categories, such as duty and commitment, but on their sensory experiences. Without sensory stimuli, today's young people are like toys without batteries.

Any form of institutional regulation is perceived as an intolerable restriction on freedom and personal fulfillment. Traditional ideals and norms, as well as obligations and values, have been replaced by the imperatives of happiness and individual rights. Young people adopt a "light" morality, without obligations or sanctions, where everything that is pleasant is good, and vice-versa, where feeling good is synonymous to well-being.

Self-absorbed and whirling around themselves, many young people see life not as time and energy dedicated to someone else or to a human value, but as a consumer good, so in practice they can conclude: "I consume, therefore I am".

Immediate pleasure versus deferred pleasure
The unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive of well-being, nor is it the way to happiness or even to maximum pleasure. (ref. Erich Fromm, To Have and To Be)

The second dilemma is between immediate pleasure versus deferred pleasure; or even exchanging today’s immediate pleasure for tomorrow’s joy. A young body is capable of enjoying the most varied and exquisite pleasures, in terms of intensity and quality, without any immediate harmful consequences; furthermore, today as never before has the consumer society offered so many means of achieving all kinds of pleasures and sensations.

The power of temptation, combined with the mentality of enjoying while there is still time, leads many youths to succumb and become addicted to substances, or obsessive, repetitive and addictive behaviours, which lead to the loss of freedom and the harm of the body and the future... As someone once said, "Use -- Abuse --Out of Use..." The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm warned a long time ago that unlimited pleasure does not lead to maximum pleasure but to pain.

Within the scope of the ability to delay gratification, an experiment was carried out with 5-year-olds who were given one marshmallow and told that if they refrained from eating it for some time, the reward would be an extra marshmallow. The children who resisted the temptation to eat the first one, and waited to be rewarded a second one, were more successful in life than those who could not wait.  

Unbridled pleasure of the body leads to sadness of the soul. Inner joy often requires the sacrifice, or suffering, of the body but it is more rewarding than pleasure because it lasts longer. The memory of the good done, especially when we contribute to the happiness and well-being of others, is like the water Jesus promised the Samaritan woman, which gives everlasting joy...

Contrary to this reality, the tendency among young people is to seek more and more immediate gratification; in the field of drugs, they are getting increasingly purer and more synthetic, leading to quicker addiction; in the field of alcohol, the "shot" has replaced drinking at length, in quantity and in time. For this reason, lacking the realism that confers the past, and the idealism or utopia that confers the future, today's young people have nothing to fight for, they only have one life to live in the sense of consuming it.

We do not mean, however, that being stoic is good and being hedonistic is bad...In fact, pleasure itself is good, as long as it is not the principal motivation for any human act. Enjoying life in the present is good, as long as it does not compromise and ruin the future; the pleasure of drinking is good, when the main motivation is health and socializing; the pleasure of food is good, when it takes health as its main motivation; the pleasure of sex is good, when it is an expression of love in the context of a commitment between a man and a woman.

Someone once said that today’s young people are like the greenhouse fruit; they go from green to rotten without ripening. This is an exaggerated generalization, however there are many young people who fit into these parameters.

Minimum effort versus maximum effort
The law of minimum effort has governed and inspired progress, science and technology, since the emergence of Homo sapiens; while the Neanderthals adapted themselves to nature, the Homo sapiens adapted nature to their minds and needs. We only need to look around us to see how the scientific discoveries of 19th century, and the technical applications of 20th and 21st centuries, have improved material life. Since the invention of the steam engine, human labour has become less and less physical and more and more intellectual.

As the number one consumer of all technical advances, young people can be led to believe that personal and spiritual progress is also governed by the law of minimum effort, and take the attitude of the hare towards the tortoise, in the race to the finishing line. If the law of minimum effort governs material progress, personal and spiritual progress continues to be governed by the law of maximum effort.

Similarly, Freud defined maturity as the change from a life based on pleasure principle, like how it is with children and adolescents, to a life based on reality principle. For this reason, if in material progress, we must be Homo sapiens, or in other words, adapt reality to our mind, then in spiritual and personal progress, we must be Neanderthals, that is, adapt ourselves to reality and the nature of things.

If material life is descending, and all the saints help it to descend, then spiritual life is ascending. Instead of postponing pleasure and not responsibility, young people do exactly the opposite, like a Peter Pan, postponing responsibility and enjoying pleasure.

Conclusion – Young people have a huge potential and energy but oftentimes lack the motivation and willpower to use it in a constructively way. To avoid falling in the trap and whirlpool of sensory pleasures, they need to know that their lives is not about themselves

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC