Speaking of myths and ghosts of the youths could mean, only and above all, ephemeral, carefree life, dreams without perspectives, a fairyland of toys/playthings waiting for the time to evaporate and finally creating space for the hard reality that kills dreams and future, enthusiasms and tensions. “Stand straight with feet on the earth”: when will you learn to defend yourself, to make your own interests, to give up your fantasies and to stand in place?”…. to earn plenty of money, to seek a well-being as the unique perspective of a life that struggles to stay in the impossible bars of a world without ideals…  

 On the contrary, I intend to describe the constant facts in the life of the youths, in spite of its being tied up to dreams, desires and ghosts, which unluckily are the possible spell that the pressure of the adults puts on their way, and which prevents them from assuming the true responsibilities of their future.

Between privileges and demands

The youths are deeply aware o being privileged in life. This awareness is almost near a state of superiority above the generation of the adults. It is something as an acquired right  never placed under discussion. “Nobody must tell me anything. Life is mine. I have my absolute right on my life. My expectation is to be respected and left in peace”.

However, they must every now and then come out of this life-style; they will make mistakes because life, as it is, is not satisfactory, this is a normal experience. However, the mistake carries with itself a lot of negative consequences: the complaints of the parents,  remaining enthroned for too long a time, loss of expressive qualities, the deluding return to normality…but it is worthwhile! I sacrifice my tranquillity for a hole through which I can see another horizon, even if it is false. I need newness, to break the routine, to say that I am in the world in my own way, to seek a place where I can find what is right in life.

Another great need is that of staying in a company, which is not yet friendship: it is saying, speaking, uttering idiocies, feeling oneself, looking at oneself beyond every virtual moment, which somehow may help in this direction. They are happy to live gratuitously, with all the instruments which season one’s being together: a cigarette, the spinello, cell phone with some photos…

The questions of sense always have a non discussed prevalence.

To be young means to feel that in the fullness of well-being one is caught by the desire of the beyond, of completeness and a fullness that one does not succeed in experiencing; it means to have a heart that keeps on widening and that the personal experiences are unable to fill in.

To be young is feeling the desire of somebody to whom you cannot succeed in giving a face; even that of the most beautiful boy, whom you dreamt, starts deluding you and the girl of your heart seems to be using you.

To be young is to get up one day and to ask yourself: where am I going to? What am I doing of my life, what is my future?

To be young is to suffer a thirst that cannot be quenched by beer; it means having broken taboos of every type: spinello, coke, boy and yet to feel still empty.

Who helps the youths to answer this and infinite more questions?  

We are always alone in facing life: from the very age of pre-adolescence we are left alone with a baggage full of information, which is not interiorised and evaluated under an ethical aspect; there is a consumption of experiences without any guidance. Each man must make all alone a judgement on himself, without any reference and without framing the information in a vital sequence of relations and confrontations.

Today, the youths are very much ready to listen to the truth, an absolute refusal of any theological imposition; they are always in the expectation of some newness and enjoy freedom of movements, which often they use as an escape from reality…

Ghosts of insecurity (precariousness)

I call ghosts of the youths the precarious situations, as interpretative figure of a long season of youth, which gets condensed mostly in work and in all the elements of stability needed by the youths: affective life and the perspective of a family; the experience of faith and the sharing of hope.   

Precariousness in work

The experience that is gradually involving all the youths of the third millennium is made up of precariousness, flexibility, the certainty of not finding a fixed work, and ductility. Work is no longer an irreversible final phase: it has some typical characteristics: uneven, unequal, partial, an intermittent experience; a diffusion of short working periods, a limited time-table, occasional work. True, the youths have discontinued to keep on waiting, to pet the adults who fight in order to keep their job, thus transforming inoccupation into precariousness, but the fact remains that the youths must keep on changing for more years, hoping that changes, sooner or later, will give them what they promise. They will surely draw a good experience from creating the curriculum and from their colloquies for the assumption to work.

Precariousness is research, is testing one’s own qualities and capacities of adaptation; precariousness is changing environments and the possibility of making useful confrontations; it is growing in the experience of relations with different persons, with the giver of work, with the constantly changing companions of work; it is giving body and projects with the prudence of not paying excessively, if they result wrong or weak; one can start all over again in different contexts; it is the need of suspending in life and constantly postponing decisions taken with plenty of fatigue.  

Precariousness is also feeling to belong to no one, to be used with promotional financings for a better qualification, without ever seeing a simple shadow of it. It is also the failing to be rooted, to have a fixed stipend, therefore the loan to face the needful expenses for the building of a house. Precariousness is preparing and qualifying oneself to do something beautiful which one likes and adapting oneself for too long a time to live on remedies.  

This means a black crisis for many. It is a going on postponing the fundamental choices of life or at least having an official coverage to disguise the incapacity of choosing one’s own way. He who has pointed at an image identity feels frustrated, because the images attached to him do not always fit him. If one lives a couple relation, the problems get multiplied by two and will surely not be solved simultaneously.

Precariousness of feelings

In the past decisions were taken at 18 years of age. The age of stupidity is over, time is ripe enough to be serious. If you do not like to work, go to the university and make up your mind about the side in which you want to stay: if you want to work, you must know that you will be always as you have begun. Do not act like me, seek a more airy future for yourself. Do you have a girl? Do get settled while we can lend a helping hand to you. Do you have your boy? Keep him tight, otherwise you will be an “aunty”. Once if a boy went for study, he made up  his mind: engineer, doctor, lawyer, teacher, researcher… if not, he found a good work from which he drew money and satisfaction. He could also get married; it was a fatigue to find a house, but sooner or later he succeeded. To day at 18 years a boy decides nothing, and if by chance he has chosen a way with a little of ingenuity, at 25 he puts everything again under discussion, including affections, boy or girl. You, too, know of some friend who got married, but has already abandoned his partner. He has already come back to be a friend of your band, hardly after one year or two, and here he is trying to forget, pretending to be a fool, without succeeding. Weakness! Why should I define my feelings! Who knows what will be born in my heart in the next years, or will be able to charm me in the multiple environment in which I may find myself to be a pilgrim looking for work.

Precariousness in faith

There is somebody who can say, without deceiving me: your will be happy if… The fullness of joy is…. Is there somebody who can indicate to me the fullness of life, who does not intimate that I must silence the dreams, because I cannot realize them?

When at night a youth looks for a discotheque, he looks at the lasers which cut off the sky, indicating the direction of the departure, a thing that he needs, but we need the arrival point. He get lost in darkness. There is a laser which indicates not only the right direction but also the objective, the true purpose, isn’t it? Above all, there is Somebody who is Happiness, who removes me from attention to things, but who fills me wit happiness, since he is happiness itself.

I want to have a full life, a great life; I am not interested in half measures, I do not adapt myself to the etiquettes in which you are plastering me. I live my life alone and I want to live it to its maximum. Do not tell me that I must stand with feet on the earth, that I must start changing my head, the time of follies being over. I do not want limits; I do not mind if my life is reckless or full of troubles: I want to live a full life. This is the search of happiness as a lasting thirst of God, which finds a secure perspective in faith. However, these questions do never succeed in reaching the church and be exposed during the 11 o’clock Mass; they inhabit the companies, the school, the work, the nights, the pubs, the territory….

Yet there is a community made on purpose to listen to these questions. There are persons who are the addressees of these questions about the happiness of men and who possess the source to quench this thirst. It is a poor community, stubborn and unfaithful people always finishing to succeed, through often winding paths never losing the true direction of the source. It is the Church. Today this community is challenged to announce her treasure  and to change the ghosts into reality.

Domenic Sigalini
Bishop of Palestrina
Piazza G. Pantanelli, 8
 00036 Palestrina (Roma)