youth
By: Chris Orucho
Worth Noting:
- Last month I had a chat with a friend of mine in college about his future and what he wants to do once done with college in December, I got the shock of my life when he gave me a glimpse of what his plans are like.
- This is a youth with whom when you meet, he seems to be having a promising future and even with the course he is pursuing, you can rightly conclude he is destined for greatness, but when you listen to his story, the other side of the grass isn’t greener like the side he displays to the world.
In today’s society, the choices of the youth have been limited by their environment and the society’s expectations. This is killing dreams, visions and even positive contributions to nation building that the youths should add to.
Parents expects the world from their children, teachers expects even the unachievable from their students and the society expects too much from its youth; this has limited the youth’s choices making s/he incapable of independently making a decision on what he should do and settling on his/her goals and hanging on what s/he has been thinking of becoming and with no vision or dream to hang to, the youth is left to live for nothing other than doing what s/he has no idea about to impress the parent, teachers and to gain space in the society, “respect”.
Last month I had a chat with a friend of mine in college about his future and what he wants to do once done with college in December, I got the shock of my life when he gave me a glimpse of what his plans are like.
This is a youth with whom when you meet, he seems to be having a promising future and even with the course he is pursuing, you can rightly conclude he is destined for greatness, but when you listen to his story, the other side of the grass isn’t greener like the side he displays to the world.
This friend of mine told me to my shock, “Cris, when you see me smile and commit my time to this course do not think it is what I have always wanted to do. I am doing it for my father, he forced me into it and I see no future with it but he doesn’t listen when I tell him how much I struggle to make ends meet in this course, every time we talk about it he’ll say his friends and colleagues have children doing such kind of courses and he doesn’t want to look inferior when they sit together to discuss about their families and so I must do it to maintain his status.
So once I’m done I will take the certificate to him and get better things to do.” I couldn’t believe parents could be that selfish and irrational. This boy’s future, dreams and hopes is almost shuttered because of his parent’s choice and desires, he says he wasn’t given time to say what he wanted once the 2017 KCSE results were announced and he happened to be one of the favored ones who were joining campus, his dad came home with an already made decision and no deliberations were allowed.
When you walk into our villages, schools, towns, community set ups, you’ll find youths who have been made to imitate others to please their families, friends, girl/boyfriends, their churches, teachers, relatives and on the other side youths who are capable of doing other things excellently but for the purpose of and respect from people around them, they have gone for careers that they aren’t able to actualize.
The society has careers that it deem paramount, careers that it believes generate higher incomes and make people rich faster, careers that it want its youth to go for even when they have no brain capacity to accommodate such. The youths left with no choice will bow to pressure, take up these hard to do courses and after a year or two they go into drugs and other immoral behavior to save them the stress and same.
When this happens, it is the same society that had set standards for them that will be making mockery of them for making wrong decisions. Once this happens, this youth(s) become frustrated, give up on his goals and dreams and becomes useless. He will then depend on others for survival, adding burden to already unbearable problems other than suggesting a solution or being part of the solution and hence s/he is of no value but a liability to the society.
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