The Future is Now

March 29, 2009

UCG Youth Panel – Megan Gilbertson

I’m Megan Gilbertson, and I am a member of this Unitarian Congregation.  I am 17 years old, in gr. 12 and I am a vegetarian.  I was adopted by my British grandparents when I was little, and have two older sisters who are in their late thirties and are very different characters.  Since I turned 14, I have been going on building expeditions up in the Honduran, and just recently Guatemalan, mountains.  The time of year that I go is at March Break for two weeks.  I am very grateful to this congregation who have shown great support and acceptance through financial and time contributions.

These are just some things that I think have influenced me to become the person, or as most people would say, the teenager that I am today.  So what I’m thinking is that I’m not like the majority of teenagers.  I have experienced different things, and grown up differently than many people my age.  

I read the description of the service today, and it said that it was about the UCG Youth sharing experiences of coming up to the edge of adulthood in these times of crisis, hope, and wonder.  That helped me decide what I’d write for today.  

I have been exposed to many things because of Honduras, Guatemala and the work that my dad did.  Toxicology is the area of work that he’s in.  It means that I am aware about many of the world’s problems.  Problems such as poverty, pollution, inequality, and many others that I have been told about or have been exposed to.

Even for me though, it is hard to remember all the time these sorts of things and not to get caught up in our society here in Guelph and Canada.  The society that is saying buy this and that, and that you need all of these new things and that you should care about quantity instead of quality.  I think I have done well with buying from Value Village and giving away clothes that I don’t think I need to people in Honduras or Guatemala when I go there each year.  But still, I see all the people in my school who have the brand name clothes and who seem to look down on you if you don’t have them, or don’t spend hours in the morning styling your hair and/or putting on makeup.  It’s hard when the place you go, almost every day, is the place where you feel least accepted.

It may be harder for me because I think I notice those around me more and consider their feelings more than other people do.  I don’t know if this is a good thing or not.  It means that I don’t talk as much and will make others happy before myself.  I think I need to be needed.  But I’m also a smart person who won’t be taken for granted, I think things out, and act with maturity and life instead of dreariness or down-heartedness.  I have a spark in me but that spark needs to be put to use helping others instead of just helping myself. Like the ‘me to we’ concept, I believe that you yourself can’t be happy unless you make others happy.  If you want to live happily and feel connected you need to be aware of others and to help them.

I find that for teenagers their hopes and dreams are drowned by what’s expected of them in terms of University, and getting a degree that now won’t even guarantee you a job.  Teenagers today seem to want University degrees and are looking down on the trades and jobs that are the foundation of our society.  Jobs such as plumbers, janitors, electricians, and the like are the ones being frowned upon because they’re the jobs that people probably feel would bring them down in how they were viewed in our society.  

Being a teenager can be looked upon as a good or bad thing depending on who you are.  If you like the high school system and going through with minimal choices in terms of what you’re doing.  If you like sitting in a desk almost all day and being viewed because of your marks instead of who you are and what you can offer to the world.  If you can make high school your life and be so focused on schoolwork and the world that high school society and cliques make, then you will do well in high school but I don’t think you will know what real life is like.  I don’t think it’s a good way for teenager to be growing up, especially when they are coming up to the edge of adulthood.

Teenagers are only really given one choice when they come out of high school, and that is to go to University or College.  Nowhere in high school assemblies or grown-up-student meetings are other options such as volunteering or taking a year off even suggested.  I think that taking a year off or doing something outside of the school system where you are free to choose what you do is very important.  It lets you find out who you really are in different situations and it lets you meet new and different people.  It lets you experiment with real world problems and challenges.  Everyone always says that being a teenager is the time where people experiment and try new things.  But for most people that probably involves figuring out which clique you want to be in high school and probably trying drugs and alcohol to see if you like them or not.  But this experimenting is nothing when you look at the real life situations and choices that teenagers and the youth of today will have to make later on in life.  The experimenting that I think should be going on is volunteering for different organisations and/or in different job settings to see which ones they like compared to those that they will inevitably dislike.  This experimenting would set youth up for the real world and adulthood that is for them, just around the corner. Where as the other experimenting that youth do nowadays just sets them up to deal with and be comfortable in the high school environment that they have been placed in and are forced to go to.

Another problem about being a teenager is the bad media coverage and the gap between the youth and the grown ups and their world.  Youth seem to look down on adults and in a lot of cases not be able to connect with them.  That could largely be due to the fact that adults also seem to look down youth and ignore or boss them around instead of trying to connect and understand them and what their going through.  When I walk on the streets and see teens and adults not saying hi to each other or even acknowledging the presence of the other it makes me sad.  It probably affects me this way because I have seen it differently.  In some of the rural places in the mountains people say hello to each other as they pass.  They do acknowledge the presence of the youth, and I think that that is because they all work in their communities and contribute to bringing in money for their families.  They ask the opinion of their youth.  That doesn’t happen so much today.  Youth here seem to be babied and seen as needing to be taken care of. The youth that do have a job and are earning money don’t usually give it to their families.  That money seems to go in some part to their wants such as popular clothes, food in fast food places, mall shopping; all things that for teens are in actuality wants, but most view them as needs.  Where as it should all be probably going to their schooling, if they’re planning to do that.

I feel like I’m digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole.  I don’t know what I’m writing about.  I’m writing mostly about things that I have seen but never actually experienced.  What I have experienced is societies in Honduras where they’re all happy and laid back and relaxed; where the teenagers seem to be integrated and a part of the goings on.  Where they are given large amounts of responsibility.  Kids that aren’t even teenagers, that are 12, are in charge of their younger sibling that is two or three years old.  Another kid who was also about the age of 12 was driving a truck with his two sisters in the front seat, along one of the bumpy and twisting dirt roads on the mountain.  To our society this responsibility would be unheard of, but there it is just a normal everyday occurrence.

Being a teenager is the waiting time in my life before everything can happen.  For me I think of it as the gathering of information before you can go off and use it.  Or not even the gathering of information but the gathering of certificates, credentials and experience that you can put on your resume that will help you later on when life starts.  That’s probably why I haven’t felt the need to rebel against my parents, because there are a lot more problems that are bigger than mine and taking the energy to disagree instead of agree is energy that could be put to much better use.  Yes, parents do need to be corrected frequently, but again, to do it in a calm way is much easier than getting frustrated about it.

In other cultures being a youth means you’re considered a responsible adult but here it’s us being considered a liability and hazard.  I don’t get why that is, or how that happened, because it definitely wasn’t always like that.  Are we doing our children a service by babying them and not giving them responsibility, or are we doing them a disservice.

I hear many people say that I have gone through being a teenager very well.  Does that mean that those who disconnect with their parents and start smoking, drinking, doing drugs etc. haven’t gone through being a teenager well?  Or have they gone through it better than I have, because their finding out who they are now instead of living in the future and who they could and would like to be.  I suppose I have done exploring though breaking off with my parents, but in a different way.  I went to Honduras where it gave me a chance to explore and try new things and figure out who I am.  That means though that I found myself and who I want to be, there, so that when I come back home I feel I sort have had to be a different person.  It’s very confusing, but I’m trying to figure it out, it will just take some time.  It may also end up with me living there and coming back here for holidays.  But I have to wait to do all that because I’m a teenager and I have certain commitments and things I have to do before I am free to do what I want.

The possibilities are endless, but they seem limited when you’re a teenager.