The relentless drive for wealth has left us with our lives already pencilled out for us, writes Tim Smith
AMID ALL the panicked reactions to the recession, a small but strident minority has managed to make its voice heard, mainly through contributions to radio programmes and letters to newspapers.
They speak for those among us who think that the lean economic times to come are just the thing to shake us plump, complacent Celtic Tiger cubs awake.
They point to the reams of newspaper that have piled up this last decade and a half, all of it splashed with tales of excess and tragedy concerning our nation's young people. They point to an increase in juvenile delinquency, in youth alcoholism, in drug abuse. They point to what seems an odd paradox in which more opportunities have somehow produced more troubled teens.
Of course, one frightening statistic they consistently overlook is the toll of youth suicide - which has climbed exponentially along with the nation's economic growth rate.
These have been good years for the property market and various other engines of wealth, all of which seem largely irrelevant to a young person trying to find his or her feet in this "new Ireland". To us, it seems as though our parents' generation put the emphasis in the wrong place. They have undoubtedly catered for the fundamentals - our education and employment prospects are the envy of the world - but their relentless drive for wealth has left us with the road map for our lives already pencilled out for us.
The plethora of options offered to us concerning our futures hide the same bare routine of school, college, training, job. What initially seem like myriad pathways to our own futures are in fact mere byroads to a highway devised by men and women with suits and spreadsheets. Is it any wonder, then, that when someone asks us what we want to be when we grow up, we are left mouthing speechlessly?
Because, in essence, that is what our extreme antics and our disturbed and disturbing behaviour amount to: a kind of speechlessness. You can say we have lost our way in a haze of alcohol and out-of-control emotions, and tot up statistics to prove your point. But that's really just like recording the size and shape of waves without studying the currents that give rise to them.
If you go deeper, if you look beyond the surface, then you'll realise that what sounds like a raucous babble is the sound of a generation trying to work out where they are and where they're going. You don't help matters by interrupting or judging what is being said. As everyone knows, that's enraging.
Maybe the fact that we are just not being listened to is the reason we feel the need to articulate ourselves in such baffling ways.
If you let us speak, put up with the odd noises that come out, and maybe even start to listen, we can start a dialogue about where we're all going.
We may not have our hands on the reins yet. Someday, though, we will, and unless we get used to the idea that to direct you need to listen to the people you are directing, the same cycle of one generation ignoring the other will continue.
On the first day of my fifth year in secondary school - almost three years ago now - our English teacher presented us with Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken. I knew we were only meant to pick it apart as you would a chicken so as to come up with the goods in the exam, but that dimmed nothing of the poem's power.
Looking back, I see now that the feeling of anticipation the speaker feels on looking down his choice of two roads is the very definition of what people call "mental health" or "wellbeing". If youth is a journey, then youth mental health is the feeling that the road ahead is clear, that you can negotiate whatever obstacles may arise, and you're on your way towards a definite destination.
The final verse, though, is famously ambiguous: the "sigh" could be either one of satisfaction or regret, and the "difference" could be either positive or negative. Today, the youth of Ireland find themselves on a similar knife-edge. If you support us in working it out - or just allow us the space and time we need to work it out for ourselves - talking big about the future, thinking outside the lines of jobs and the economy for a time, then our road ahead is a clear one towards fulfilment.
If not, though, no matter what road we take, our every thought will be on the road not taken.
Tim Smith (19) is a youth advisor to Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health.
Contact: info@headstrong.ie
As Tony Bates is enjoying a break, his forthcoming columns will be written by members of Headstrongs youth advisory panel