Hope

OK how about this...What in the world has happened in this country to cause the total lack of hope I see in youth today. I remember feeling and I know I was not alone, that I could do anything, and it was my responsibility to save the world. The whole "Ask not what your country can do for you..." permeated our consciouses we had a duty to make life for others better, to battle injustice where ever we found it, and we did because we believed we could make a difference. We protested, organized and marched, I even joined the Socialist Worker Party as a college freshman, and just knew we could change the world to a peaceful utopia.

Service was a part of your life, not something you got credit for in school. You helped neighbors, worked for you school, even created fundraising events when we felt the call. This is not to pretend that we were not real narcissistic teenagers, we were often as self centered and oblivious as today's youth, but in that narcissism we had the audacity to believe we could make a difference. If asked "In 100 years will the world be better or worse?" we would have overwhelmingly responded "Better" and gone on to explain that it would be so because we were going to make it better.

I did ask my class this year why there was no hope, and one young man said there was just too much information and it consistently left them feeling small and inadequate. I still approach situations with a "What can I do to fix this" attitude while my daughters regularly focus on "Why this can never work." What has changed to make our youth feel so helpless, have we mollycoddled them, failed to inspire them, handicapped them with overprotection? Maybe all of the above? If life is leaving our youth feeling incapable what must we do to build in them a hope that will sustain. A hope that will carry them to heights we can only imagine, and through those times in life when hope is all that is left.

Daughter, thoughts?