filling in the tig survey on youth has to be one of the most baffling things i've done all year. ok, so the year's only a few days old, but nonetheless...
how can you define youth? it made me sad to think of all the people filling in that questionaire saying things like 'youth are the future' and similar feelgood soundbites. youth are not the future. the youthful are the future. all around me i can see teenagers, twentysomethings, who have mentalities better suited to those many decades younger. this is a highly specialised form of prejudice - agism, believe it or not. the belief that after 30, or 40, you are past it, of no use, boring. the type of youth tig is so desperately trying to define is youthfulness itself - that quality only universally possessed for the first few years of our lives. only a few retain this characteristic - youthful energy, joy, openmindedness, and the gift to see everything as new. some lose this gift so early it's a tragedy. do not pin 'youth' down. let it be as careless and beautiful in contradictions as the people it inhabits. someone asked me recently to describe myself, purely in adjectives. i couldn't possibly do it. for every positive or negative aspect of my personality i identified, its opposite within me reminded me of its existence. generalisation will be our downfall