Being young in Trump's time
In this Sunday's newspaper, Àlex Gutiérrez interviewed the comedian Maria Rovira, known as Oye Sherman, with whom I had the good fortune to meet doing radio a few years ago. I remember how impressed I was that such a young girl showed such great interest in language and culture, and sparked a quick and funny mind without any desire to grab the spotlight.
Maria, who does monologues and TV and radio and has now published her first book, Garlanda, when the interviewer asks her about her future plans, replies, after an "Uf", that "we live in such a precarious universe that my dreams are like having a home, but no longer necessarily owned, but on a classic rental basis". And reading her answer is as if I had heard something fall from high up with a great crash.
This is what happens to me all the time when I listen to young people today: they are smart, they are prepared, they are restless, and we, their parents, from our perspective and boomer experience, think they have great ambitions and that they will spread their immense wings and take flight. But it turns out that they feel they have lead in their wings and that the world they have to live in is precarious and threatened by the decisions of a madman, and they don't dare or don't want or can't make ambitious plans. Most of those I know concretize their future dreams in a rental apartment.
It's obvious: how can you build a life without having the possibility to make a nest where you can make plans and dream? Despite this, most young people I talk to have their life goals quite clear: work shouldn't be the center of my life and it should be work that doesn't contradict my basic principles. Thus, a doctorate in biomedicine doesn't want to work in the pharmaceutical industry and considers becoming a gardener, or a medical student finishes her degree but doesn't do the MIR because she doesn't agree with how the assisted healthcare system works, so she makes her way to work in other fields. It is a respectable fight to be free and coherent, which has a lot to do with the volatility of everything they see, read, or live, and which, for us adults, unsettles us.
Today's youth are awake and have a sharp critical sense —read, if you don't, the novel Amèlia de les Camèlies by the very young Etna Miró (Cap de Brot Edicions)—. They will progress against all the difficulties imposed by the world they have inherited, I am sure. This is what their brave gaze expresses.
In the depths of their eyes, however, alongside bravery, I see great bewilderment and a good dose of disappointment. Perhaps from this attitude it will be easier to shake off old customs, useless needs, various syndromes, excessively burdensome influences, and finally, take flight.
I only hope that, from above, they don't reproach us for the world we've left them. We, like them, did what we could from a similar but perhaps more unconscious bewilderment. Phew!