The Herald
The Herald Reporter
20 July 2013
Ever asked yourself what people will remember you for when you are gone? Do we even allow ourselves to think of a time when we will no longer be there? It is a known fact that because we are human beings, there shall be a time when we will no longer be around on this earth and there has to be some form of legacy we leave behind surely?
I had a telephone conversation this week while chasing up a story for Star FM with the Minister of Education, Arts, Sport and Culture, David Coltart and he spoke about how young people in the country are losing it because there were not many positive older role models in society.
The minister and I were talking about how the country’s education sector is being adversely affected by HIV, which has seen some children being orphaned and having to drop out of school because there is no one to pay school fees for them.
He also touched on those children who are actually living with HIV, after being infected during and after birth, saying some of these children because of ill health do not regularly attend school and at times actually drop out completely, in the process destroying their future.
Minister Coltart also spoke about sugar daddies that prey on young girls as a serious challenge facing the young females of this country. And then he spoke about the behaviour of adults in the country which he said was no longer exemplary and as such is not helping young people much when it comes to positive modelling. Just what are we as adults of today teaching the children?
That got me thinking. A look at what is going on around us as a society will show that today people are just living for the moment. No one truly cares to think deeply about how some of the things and behaviour we practice today will affect the children, who happen to be tomorrow’s future. It is more like parents and adults are saying “do as I say and not as I doâ€.
Let us just look at the marriage institution today. Men and women today change partners as and when the feeling comes upon them. Divorce is no longer a word that people frown upon. It is no big deal.
We were laughing the other day with some family members that in the past by a certain age, both men and women were supposed to be married but nowadays what seems to matter is what one has accumulated in terms of personal wealth and not who they have in their life. In fact some younger nieces of mine were saying love is just overrated and it has become obvious to their generation that the more important thing is to go after money rather than love, which only brings with it heartache and HIV, they said before bursting up in giggles. One of them, who is in university said her mission in life is pretty simple in that all she has to go is get a job and a rich man who she would divorce after a couple of years, walking away with half his wealth.
I asked her why she would aspire to divorce and she said it was the in-thing plus relationships were just too taxing. This is what society has taught her.
Putting that conversation alongside the one held with Senator Coltart in my mind, I realised that the biggest problem we have today is that the children no longer have positive role models to look up to in the family and community. Every day they are waking up to images of men who are assaulting women. Every day they are waking up to reports of men who rape women and children.
They are seeing pictures of men and women who are cheating. They are faced by reports of acrimonious divorce cases each time they open the papers and magazines.
They are faced with violence everywhere, whether it is politically motivated or is happening in the domestic sphere. They are seeing society turning to guns, knives and fists to deal with problems.
Pornography has become easily available to them. The Internet, with all its advantages, also pollutes their minds if they go onto the wrong sites. Around them, instead of seeing adults and a society that advises them, they are faced with a society gone mad.
Young people of today are faced with adults who actually want to molest them, in the form of sugar daddies. They are surrounded by adults who change partners as if they are changing clothes. They are faced with adults who are violent towards each other. They are faced by adults who do not believe in dialogue as the best way to solve disputes.
They are faced by adults who do not participate in national processes such as voting. They are faced by adults who just complain. They are faced by adults who in some cases are lazy and do not pull their weight. They at times have fathers who need to be taken to court to provide for them.
They have parents who drink too much and talk too little. They are raised by parents who are absent, believing that what they are doing out there is more important than being there. In some cases the young people are raised by nobody and have to raise themselves.
Today’s young people have very few adults to look up to. There is a serious shortage of positive role models for them out there.
This brings me to the question I posed initially. As we live our lives, do we ever think what we want to be remembered for? As a parent and a leader, what do you want your children to remember when you have gone?
Is it the virtues of hard work, is it your honesty, is it your loving nature, is it your being there all the time you were needed, is it your strictness, is it your sense of responsibility, is it how you always treated your partner with love and respect, is it how you helped those around you?
Or shall it be about how many partners you had, how many people you duped, how many hearts you broke, how many people you robbed, how many people you fought with, among other such desirables?
Or maybe everyone will be so glad when you are gone that they will not want to remember anything?
Just think about it and who knows, we may all become better people.