A COOL GUY- Part two

CHAPTER  ONE

THE  YOUTH

  Youth  is best described as a period of transition from the dependence of childhood stage to the independence of adulthood and the awareness of our interdependence as members of a community, according to United Nations definition. Youth is a more fluid category than a fixed age-group so the definition gets adjusted according to the context, but the common factor is that it is a stage that accommodates late childhood and experienced adulthood. The age range is often put between 16 to 25 years of age when the young one is entering college and when he has finished school and is trying to settle down to his life of independence, but that classification will have to be broadened in Nigeria where the gap between finishing school and getting a job has increased due to the current economic situation of the country.  Therefore, it will be more apt to adopt the definition given in the African Youth Charter where “youth” means “every person between the ages of 15 and 35 years”.

You Can Change The World

Youths, like Jude, have what it takes to change the world. Jude had it really rough growing up but he didn’t allow it to kill his dream. His parents were poor- the mother was a petty grocery trader and the father a security guard who ended up with a stroke illness that made it difficult to continue any meaningful work. So Jude had to shuttle between secondary education or the high school as others will call it, and helping the mother in her little business that the family depended on. In the midst of all these, Jude loves to create beauty; he has always dreamt of drawing masterpieces as houses or paint and sculpt beautiful images and so kept his dream of being an Architect or sculptor alive. Meanwhile, he would go to a public school that his parents could afford, then come back home and join his mother in her market stall. There he would do his school home work, and if time permitted, pick some papers and draw the images that caught his fancy.  With time he started making flower pots and home decors with handy materials and sold them to neighbors and church members. And very importantly, he saved the proceeds from his artwork haven learnt early that that is the fundamental rule of creating wealth. Eventually, the young lad was able to gain entrance to a tertiary institution to further pursue his dream of being an Architect. And there is more to his story.

Youths have the vibrancy of the young age and the risk-taking charge to desire to confront issues, dare them if possible, and manipulate them to the desired tempo and situation. This is because the youthful stage of life looks at things raw as they are without necessarily doing so with the lens of long years of experience which sometimes can be stalling, even if not always careful. Such raw approach to issues can be objective and devoid of much sentiment in one sense, and also exploratory to the advantage of wanting to try out new ways of doing things.   Jude was vibrant in combining looking after his dad, schooling, helping out in the mum’s business and trying to leave out his dream. That is a go-getting spirit.

But one must admit that this vibrancy has its down side of being pre or immature, prone to unreasonable risk and often devoid of in-depth analysis and projections that experience procures. Our dear Jude was on the right track doing all he could to raise money for his schooling but at some point, derailed and had to pay dearly for it. He made friends who cajoled and lured him into using his money to try out the game of gambling with the promise that his money would be quickly multiplied to ease his burden. That false move cost him a year in his school as he lost all his money in the process and couldn’t pay for his next year in school. This is why  youths or young adults must equally give room for intelligent guidance while expressing the openness that they must have carried over from the age of innocence and merging it with the adventurous spirit that should be positive and creative. Jude probably wouldn’t have lost his money and a year in his school had he confided his move to his parents because they would have advised him to stay clear of very risky business like gambling.

But luckily, he had been trained in resiliency by his upbringing which makes one keep focus on a goal or dream irrespective of the banana peels on the way. And so he recovered from his depression and moved back to his old road of hard work and savings and with a good lesson about life that short cuts usually have their down side which may be very costly. Besides, he was a member of a youth organization in his community called Youth Arise. They meet to share experiences, do voluntary community services, and collaborate in whatever talent each had to develop and help members rise up, at least psychologically, if any of them went down for some reason. Belonging to that group helped him survive the one year he had to stay out of school.

 This belongingness to a team with positive vision can be beneficial in many ways to both the members and the society they serve. A young lad fresh from a school where students of all tribes mingled like brothers and sisters or who belongs to a club of guys with positive outlook like Jude’s Youth Arise and who ventures into politics is most likely to inject that fresh blood of general fraternity, equity and fairness into an atmosphere that has been bedeviled with ethnicity, injustice and hatred. And the group will have the clout, the drive, and energy to do it while persuasively pushing for improved ways of performing certain functions that need be done. That is why it is a crime to see youths just stand by and watch when things go bad in a polity, or worse still, let themselves be manipulated into perpetuating the evil that destabilizes a community or enthrones suffering. They should team up and speak out in such a way that they will be heard, without of course, causing damages that will affect persons or even themselves.

The notion that the quality of the youths of any society dictates the quality of persons and leadership that will characterize the immediate future, is a truism that need not be debated, for the simple reason that they will be the next in line to step into the action and decision-making roles of the society. And decisions are not just dropped out of a vacuum: they are the products of calculations based on a given paradigm, perceptions and values built over time which include the formative years of  those potential leaders. So garbage in, garbage out or  virtue in, virtue out applies unless some intervention steps are taken somewhere in between the foundational grooming and adult stages of life. The ultimate judge is the collective quality of our youths- their zeal to succeed against all odds, their character, dominant perspectives and the security system of the society.

Yes, youths can change the world but that is if they submit themselves to tutelage right from home through school and do not get fixated to some childhood trauma they may have gone through. There is a lot of despondency arising from childhood traumas, negative peer pressure or a feeling of privation which often lead to violent expressions or introverted anger or sadness enveloped in all kinds of amoral or destructive habits like substances abuse, alcoholism or sexuality misuse and abuse. A lot of boys are living with bitterness either because of their abandonment by one of their parents who left due to marital separation or due to violent upbringing by a drunken father or stepfather. Some girls have been raped by someone they trusted as a child or drugged and violated in a party and so on. The experiences vary, are abusive and the pain deep enough to make one get bitter at life, isolate him or herself from even simple healthy relationships and trudge in life with hatred. Yes, the pain is real but I have news for you:  staying put in the puddle of pain is as self defeatist as it is retrogressive. We all have our stories but the sweetening is in hearing about how we navigated the challenges and turned the stumbling blocks to stepping stones.

Tony had every reason to be angry with the society and turn to a social miscreant but he was smart enough to allow his head rule his heart. He was a student of a University and had a girl he was intimately friendly with. But another boy, Daryl, from his town was equally interested in this girl and so asked Tony to leave the girl for him. Tony felt  Daryl was sick upstairs and asked him to go hell and the girl, Kemi was equally in love with Tony and would not yield to Daryl’s advances. Unknowingly to both of them, Daryl was a top member of a dangerous cult in the school who use whatever means possible to have their way. Daryl and his gang then waylaid Kemi on a lonely path in the school compound and pressed her to renounce her relationship with Tony or be dealt with. On refusal to obey them, they raped her and warned that if she ever reported the incident to the school, they would kill Tony. The poor girl was now nursing the horrible trauma of being raped and was also saddled with saving the life of her friend, Tony.

Tony noticed a change in his girl’s demeanor but could not get her to tell him what the problem was. She even started distancing herself from Tony who on his part got angry with her and accused her of haven giving in to Daryl’s pressure. After a period of quarrels, they separated and Tony, who was in his final year as an Engineering student concentrated on his studies and final projects but with a heave heart of having been rejected. Kemi , on her part, turned to a gloomy isolated student who simply trudged on in school with no interest in her studies, friendship or anything. Eventually, after  that year which was her penultimate year in school, she left and never came back.

She travelled back to her home which was a different state from the school, told the parents that she needed a break from school as she had developed a constant headache and heaviness in the head whenever she tried to study. The parents were devastated but allowed her to stay home for one year and then go back to finish her studies. Meanwhile, they took her to the hospitals for treatment and the various medications were only palliative until a clinical psychologist was brought into the picture to dig to the root cause of the problem. After many months of therapy, Kemi developed enough trust in the therapist to tell her full story but with the promise from the therapist that the school of the incident be not contacted.

By then Tony had left school and then made effort to reconnect with Kemi and they started communicating again. In one instance, Tony asked her to let him visit her and she agreed and that single visit started up a whole gamut of revelations, bitterness and war. Tony had left school and his girl Kemi had dropped out of school and he felt he could now go to his town where Daryl also resided and fight the injustice meted out to Kemi. He reported the case to the police who arrested Daryl and some of his cult members and the canker worms of many atrocities they had been committing in the school were exposed. Of course, the cult was banned in the school, the members who had not graduated were rusticated and they were all sent to jail.

Unknowingly, to the police and Tony, the cult had a network of bad boys who were scattered in the city housing the University and even nearby institutions. Those gang members now took it upon themselves to avenge their members and so set a trap to deal with Tony’s father since Tony was no longer living in Town. They set a trap on the old man’s regular route and had him badly wounded in a staged road accident. To fast track the story, Tony eventually got to know that the cult members were scattered all over their city and that they had a hand in his father’s accident but the father managed to convince him that the war had to stop. Those untamed destructive boys thrived on violence and misery and they were not going to play to their gallery and live like the mafias. The police went on with their job of trying to clean up the city but the issue of the accident was not reported and Tony decided to move over to a city where he and Kemi eventually settled down in marriage and Kemi’s depression eventually lifted.

Kemi transferred her script to another University and completed her course in sociology. Immediately after school she and Tony started an NGO that encouraged girls who were sexually abused and boys who were victims of broken homes and felt bitter about it, could come and share their experiences, be counseled and helped to heal. One lesson they all had to take away is that we are all bigger than whatever trauma or problems we encounter in life. Incidences happen and pass over, pains come and wound the heart but our lives go on. So ultimately, the choice lies with us to do whatever is necessary to rise above the hurts and reclaim our lives or lie in the puddle of bitterness, anger and self pity and waste our lives with all the talents and goodness packed in it.

The choice is ours and parts of the tools for recovery are listed in chapters 12 and thirteen of this book.

Many who received good formation in the critical developmental stage of pre-puberty years transit to the teenage age either with their foundation guarding them against negative influences or succumbing to external influences that may negate the values they grew up with.  It depends on the strength of character, the oversight function of parents and guardians or the lack of it, the quality of the environment and the peers they tag along with. The sum result of  the path they take is that many fall off the train of progress, blame circumstances for their plight and even turn anti- social while the former group confronts their challenges, firm up their decisions to succeed and make a definitive mark of progress in a world that is growing increasingly individualistic and chaotic.

Richard Branson, the world renowned entrepreneur, tells us in his book- Virginity- that he couldn’t complete his education in school because he was dyslexic. He found it difficult piecing words on the board together but he knew his strength and made sure his debility did not mar his dreams.

Again, it is lamentable when brilliant youths who should be part of the pace setters or game changers, meet unfavourable social climate like not getting the employment they desire, simply stay put with lamentation, get lured into a group which tries to escape from the reality they find themselves in by the use of dangerous addictive euphoric drugs and systematically deteriorate into a state of misguided miscreants with no ambition or positive plans to overcome their circumstances. That is not even to talk of the negative health and social effects their lifestyle has plunged them into. Such youths are a disappointment to their families and themselves and a disgrace to the society and their state in life.  They may be blaming the society that has not provided an enabling environment for them to operate in and this claim may be legitimate but not an excuse for redundancy. The government is made up of human beings like them whom they should not allow to ruin their lives: they should ask questions in legitimate ways and then go ahead to make something good out of their lives. They may be loud and mouthy but they can never truly lay claim to being cool because coolness demands level headedness, integrity and a go-getting attitude.   The good news is that their case is not closed unless they want to close it themselves. They should draw up the last residual saving power within them (for we all have it) and seek for a rehabilitative solution while it can still be found.

But make no mistake about this: you can change your world or circle of influence and with others, collectively change the world. It only takes some dreaming, some pro-activity and some re-scripting with determination and hard work. You can pull through the challenges on your path, navigate through immovable ones including bad influencers and discover that the world is in dire need of those who chart new courses or retrieve good old ones to make life better for all.

 Such cool guys are hot cakes anywhere even when times are hard. And the key is to always want to serve because success comes faster if your prime motive is to serve others. We will come back to this later.

Chapter  Two

 WHERE ARE WE?

As a youth are where you should be? With regards to vibrancy, integrity, go-getting spirit and pursuit of goal and  justice are you playing your role like Jude and Tony?

We do not need any soothsayer to tell us that our youths are of three categories—(1) Those that are hurting because the society is not providing the necessary structures for them to pursue their dreams,(2) Those who believe that quick fixes without hard work is the smart way to go and (3)  Those who imbibe the good virtues they are brought up with, graduate from school or apprenticeship and venture into life with the determination to succeed regardless of how the social climate is. They are the true representatives of that beautiful lifestyle of action and go-getting stage of life.