For our youth to be loftily inspired it is critical that they have a sense of self. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, to inspire is defined as: to influence, move, or guide by divine or supernatural inspiration. (2): to exert an animating, enlivening, or exalting influence upon. The etymology of this awesome word inspire has its roots in Middle English, from Old French, and Latin “inspirare” meaning into + spirare, meaning to breathe. So inspire essentially means to breathe into, not unlike the breath of life our creator imbued man with. What greater center of operation from which one can proceed in life than from their true self, the divine principle within them.
Conversely, the opposite of inspiration is indifference, coldness, inattention, and apathy, which in our communities has bred disdain, contempt, and recklessness. Where the highest ambitions of a segment of our young people are not college and harnessing the power of idealism to be our future leaders of tomorrow, but rather it is celebrating the hallmark of reaching twenty-one, because the expectations of making it to that age for our children in this age and time is very slim. The nexus between that grim reality and a abject absence of a sense of self is beyond apparent. We know what inspiration is and are assuredly convince that our young people must have more than a does of it to turn the bleak statistics that we are all aware of around. But the question is, how do we get it to them?
Firstly, we must understand that the spectrum of identity has various parts, and those parts must cohesively blend into each other for the health of the self. There is one self, with many differentiating aspects: you have the essence of who we are; the spirit, our core our center. Then we have our immediate family, friends, community, and nation.
All of these comprise our collective identity, they combined, are where we derive our sense of self. We must take care to ensure that they are full of breath (inspiration), robust and strong. Breathlessness cannot inspire.
Whatever disconnection or disease existing in our youth, it is only a reflection of that disconnection and disease that exist in our society at large. Our young people are not raised in a vacuum, they are not an island unto themselves. Sadly many of the symptoms of mal-adjustment that we witness in the headlines of our media are a forecast into a greater problem plaguing our homes, communities, and nation; it is the proverbial dead canary in the mine that acts as a dire warning that there is danger. We have become poor examples as adults, asthmatic in our efforts as models that inspire. The onus is on us.
Not to be cliché or trite, but it truly takes a village to raise a child, be it raise them to go crooked, or go straight, that depends on the state of the village. It is there, the village where the most emphasis must be placed. Instead of making the at-risk youth the primary focus of attention, our efforts must be more holistic driven; give more attention and support to the family structure from which the youth is nurture, where the youth gains his/her initial sense of identity (often times it is there where the greatest degree of inspiration and education must occur) where we adults have lost our footing. Systems of support for the parents and the adults inhabiting the immediate space of our young people must be erected, coalescing around them to aid in what may be fractured there, which acts as magnetic corralling force that pulls the youth into an orbit of stability, thus giving him/her greater prospects of self-discovery. Put the health of the family first, and the youth will be inspired.
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