The Nation’s Youth Sliding

Nowhere is this better represented than in the precincts of family.

On occasion, we see represented those who are old, ailing and on their way out.

There are also those people who are in their prime, have young children and who comprise that vast majority known as the working poor.

Children represent and prefigure the future.

Where these generations work together family life becomes the crucible for a productive future.

Where they bicker, bitch and fight among themselves, the foundations are laid for life-long misery and distress.

And so it follows that those who chat about the need for the government to do this or that should question themselves and ask whether they themselves have done enough for their brood.

This is called, taking responsibility.

We need more of this spirit throughout this land of ours.

For whatever reason, Bahamians are people are decidedly conservative. We see evidence for this is in the fact that even where things are sliding from bad to worse, Bahamian decision-makers – at all level of society – routinely dither and dawdle, sometimes in the vague hope that the problem in question would just go away.

The fact remains that problems hardly ever go away. What they do – more often than not – is that they morph and sometimes become even more virulent.

We see this happening at the household level where and when some parents routinely coddle and make excuses for the wrong-doing of their youth. We call this behavior ‘cloaking’.

Invariably, the day comes when the young thug is revealed as just that – a young thug – and then and thereafter, the deluded parent or parent resort to other stratagems. One such concerns their depiction of other young thugs as the types who have misled their good sons and daughters.

As they cloak their brood, they just as routinely try to absolve themselves of responsibility.

This is just not good enough.

People – especially when they are parents – should be big enough and smart enough to understand that they have a duty to their children; and that – as such – that duty should be discharged to the best of their ability.

If they wake to discover that they need help, they should reach out to their neighbours, family and friends, and to their church and other civic leaders.

They can and should – where appropriate – put questions and expect answers from those who represent them in the halls of parliament.

There is also a compelling case to be made to support the thesis that were local government for New Providence to be added to the governance mix, both questions and answers would be decidedly better and different from what we currently get from an Assembly that is apparently not in touch with the ordinary citizen, their cares and their concerns.

Our country is in the throes of any number of conjoined crises, some economic, some political and others decidedly social.

No matter how you cut it, things are tough and old solutions are now returning – in new guise as apparently brand new problems.

In addition, with jobs now harder and harder to come by for more and more people, the Bahamian family is being stressed as never before. As the pressure mounts, some people are turning their rage and wrath inwards, sometimes leading to suicide.

On other occasions, the pain and the rage are directed outwards in an arc that radiates from the household to the street and thence to the workplace.

In short, people are hurting.

No amount of idle pontificating can or will do anything to help anyone in any real way.

What is needed is a national commitment to understand what is in fact happening, with a view to determining how we – as a people – can survive in the days, weeks and months ahead.

In the ultimate analysis, we need to come to grips with the fact that the time has come for some genuine soul-searching; that process must involve more than trying to conjure up some blissful times that never existed.

As outlined in two key Commissions of Inquiry- in the immediate aftermath of Independence, the Bahamas lost its way.

Were we – as a people – to make this leap and come to the realization that we did go adrift, we might yet find our way to safe harbour.

Absent this realization, our nation’s youth will continue to slip, slide and suffer for the sins of omission and commission on the part of their forebears.