The Young Do Not Know Enough-Daily Meditation 4.12.23

Today’s quotation:

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible–and achieve it, generation after generation.-Pearl S. Buck

Today’s Meditation:

It’s pretty ironic–and quite a shame–that we do so much to limit our young people.  We tend to try to put them into boxes to get them to adopt our beliefs and our ways of doing things instead of encouraging them to reach out and take risks, expand their horizons, and develop new and hopefully better ways of doing things.  Our young people must be able to look at what we’ve done, recognize the errors and successes, avoid the former, and expand the latter.

Our young people do have more daring than the older people who surround them.  Part of that, of course, comes from not having faced many of the challenges and much of the adversity that the older people have faced, but why do we try to tell them not to take risks to avoid hurting themselves instead of telling them that those risks may be the essential elements of their lives?  We should encourage their ability to try new things instead of discouraging them and turning them into frightened beings who seek only security.

We’ve done what we can so far and will do what we can until we leave.  But it’s our young people who have the potential to make more significant changes, if only because they have more time to work on them once they start.  We can help them, encourage them, and emulate them if we really want to shed the chains that we’ve burdened ourselves with since our early years.  Youth is a time of fantastic potential–and we can tap into it if we allow ourselves to uncover the youth we’ve spent so many years covering up in layer after layer of “security.”

Questions to consider:

Why do we tend to see youth in somewhat negative terms?  Do we think they haven’t learned enough yet to be taken seriously?

Are your main messages to people younger than you messages of encouragement or of limitation?

Do you keep your own thoughts young?  How might you do so?

For further thought:

Youth is not a time of life. It is a state of mind.  You are as old as your doubt, your fear, your despair.  The way to keep young is to keep your faith young.  Keep your self-confidence young.  Keep your hope young.-Luella F. Phean

If you missed yesterday’s Daily Meditation, it is right here.