What do teenagers look for?
Where is the life we have lost by living? Where is the wisdom that we have lost knowing? Where is the knowledge that we have lost in information? (T. S. Eliot, choirs from "La Rocca")
I have chosen to introduce my brief reflection with these questions, in order to stimulate all of us to one consideration: we are in fact immersed in a seductive world dominated by information, immediately available and usable. The many and undeniable advantages, in terms of usefulness and efficiency, are now counterbalanced by the risk of addiction to a superficial approach to knowledge and, more generally, to life itself.
I wonder how our young people live this new reality: I often perceive them so jolted in surfing (perhaps too early) in the ocean of the Web, that I can't avoid being too often robbed of the joy of crossing the sea of real life.
I believe that they need to feel at their side people capable of conveying to them the sense and taste of research and waiting: someone who - looking at them in the eyes - teaches them that difficulties are part of life and that they can truly turn into opportunities for growth.
The teenagers, in truth, are full of energy and live without measures every experience, with a desire in their hearts to put them into practice in something great and important: they therefore need to be helped to welcome and cultivate it. If this motion of the heart were left to itself and not recognized by us adults, it would risk dissipating or becoming a destructive force, causing them to sink into a world of apathy, boredom, loneliness and loss of meaning.
Is this company still aware of this? I am convinced of this, even though I think that each of us is obliged to do our part in making available an always valid offer of projects and ideals for which to spend ourselves, as alternatives to mere things.