As I become intimately involved in the lives of young people, as the trust begins to deepen, as the transformative relationship evolves, I am shaken to the core that they confide their secrets to me, the unspoken dreams that have almost died, smothered by the concrete jungle or the cells that hold them in. Yet these dreams have not died, although they have been deferred, a remnant remains and hope stays alive. The human soul is incredibly resilient, resistant, and programmed to survive.
As I sit at the desk facing this boy, who will turn seventeen in less than a month, behind the walls of a prison designed for children, I look into his eyes and let him know that I know the truth, and he knows the truth, and even though things didn’t turn out the way we had hoped, he carries on, and what can I say to this boy ,who is becoming a man, who will be now denied the normal rites of passage that a young man goes through? One day, I say, you will return home, and you will have a family, and you can embrace the ones you love, but for now, stay focused on your education, don’t let your dreams die, stay connected to the outside world so that when you are released, the years spent locked away you can fill with facts of what those of us walking free take for granted…new technology, wars and movements, tragedies and elections, good news and bad. We take in what we want while others grasp for a glimpse of life outside a single bed cell.
This makes the fight for those who could so easily be swept up in a tide of spontaneity even more desperate when you know what’s at stake. Lives and freedom. But for someone who has nothing to lose, someone who has started to give up and become numb to the world because the pain is too deep, to take a risk when you have only to gain becomes a battle of wills. Where are the youth programs? The recreation centers? The sports teams? The trade and vocational schools? Where is the workforce? Is there really one to enter into in this urban community? Where are the mentors, the pied pipers, the ones who can lead the way out? Or is there a way out, and what becomes the way out?
I ask because the unanswered questions swim in my head grasping for air and a solution that may hold the key to our survival. Develop and exercise a critical mind, it may be the only thing that will keep us alive and our humanity intact.
Sometimes I think adults don’t ask children and youth "why" because they’re scared to know the truth. There is no neat package or simple answer but if we don't make the space for ask difficult topics and subjects, to share their deepest fears or darkest secrets, to the elders, the ones with life experience, then who can they turn to? Each other, within? But it’s addictive, the truth. Once I tasted it I needed more and more. Let me know your truth. Maybe it’s selfish now, but I’m hooked. I want to know more, I need to know more, so I can understand and make sense of this crazy world and know what you’re up against because your battle is mine. We owe it to the youth. They are inheriting the world that we have designed and by our complacence condoned. As for me, give me the raw uncut truth. I’ll take that any day rather than some comfort and secure cocoon that I isolate in and reinforce my reality by denying yours. Give me the truth that is what keeps me alive.