Through life, we feel two kinds of pain. There is this physical pain that radiates through the body when you whip your ankle into oblivion with a razor scooter. Then there is this heart wrenching earth quaking pain when your boyfriend of three days breaks up with you. That’s emotional pain. And through all of these, adults have this fictional requirement that you have to be a certain age to feel pain. Pain is only for adults, not the young. But pain is not the only item on the list of things young people can’t feel or do. Those of us still celebrating our teens and early twenties don’t seem to have basic knowledge or the ability to sign a contract if you’re under nineteen.

To condemn the young people thriving in high schools and college campuses is to condemn the future. It’s an absolute problem when my lack of crow’s feet and forehead wrinkles puts a target on my back. Youth is not synonymous with stupidity. And being young is not equal to lacking empathy, compassion, and pain. A portion of the older generations that scream, “it’s the fault of the millennials” need a reminder that they too were once young. And have it known, that we are all young at something. A young couple with a first child are young parents. The tenured professor was once a young TA. And the list goes on. Perhaps the bigger issue in condemning the youth is that if the baby boomer generation stopped their damnation, they’d forget their own youth.

In high school teachers would constantly preach how hard things were going to get. Senior year they beat their students over the head with this nightmare called the “real world”. And finally we held our diplomas and prepared for the “real world” of college. And it came as a shock when we arrived at college and were still being told that we hadn’t reached the real world. It’s a simple game the old play to keep power over the youth in remembrance of their own. You see, the eighty-year old tells the forty-five year old that they haven’t reached the real world until they see their significant other die. And the forty-five year old tells the twenty-year old that the real world hasn’t hit until we give up trying to be a soundcloud rapper and get a real job. Like at a bank. And none of this is an easy fix. It’s hard to tear down steel walls and melt them into bridges. Living in a world where we look for the things that make us different has taught us that we have nothing that makes us the same. If the old could recognize their youth in the youth of the present there could be the beginnings of a connection. We could begin to form relationships out of combined experience and eagerness. Being only eighteen myself, I lack the experience of a thirty-year-old. And likewise, the thirty-year old lacks the eagerness and drive I bring to the table.

In old age there is seemingly nothing but back aches and water bills. But in youth there is invincibility. The youth of today emerge as leaders and fight for justice because we fear nothing. We fear nothing partly because the frontal lobe of our brain is partially developed but more so because we recognize that we are the future. We are the change. And in our youth we feel infinite. It is true that you and me will someday have the misfortune of looking like raisins, and we will probably turn green with envy for the youth. But don’t forget the time when we stood infinite and refused to back down in the face of adversity.