For several months now, a video by American anthropologist Simon Sinek has circulated online. I suspect many of you have seen it. In just over fifteen minutes, he zeros in on some of the most glaring vulnerabilities of the eighteen-to-thirty-four demographic—the so-called millennials— often dismissed as lazy, self-absorbed, vain, and glued to screens. Sinek describes them as young people who were never allowed to sit with frustration as they grew up, who struggle to build meaningful relationships, who are restless and hungry to leave their mark on the world, and who chase—and get—instant gratification thanks to modern technology.
In my mind, impatience and the hunger to change the world go hand in hand with what I think of as youth; but young people left alone, staring into their phone screens? That's something else. Focused only on myself, I either turn others into objects I can dominate or leave my mark on—sometimes violently—or I become withdrawn, depressed, mistrustful of myself and others, unconsciously dependent on the devices now at my disposal. (And let's be honest: the adult world isn't exempt from any of this either.)
The things that matter most in life—the things that give it meaning—need time, Sinek reminds us. And I would add something that seems worth stating plainly: they need another human being, flesh and blood. Love. Trust. Stable relationships. Joy that runs deeper than momentary pleasure.
The stories in this issue are built on time and patience, on investment in ourselves and in each other.
The stories in this issue are built on time and patience, on investment in ourselves and in each other.We ourselves must remember this and bear witness to it—pointing toward something Higher and Other that concerns each of us, no matter where we find ourselves: at home, in society, at school, in sports. Pope Francis, at the thirty-first World Youth Day in Kraków, spoke of brotherhood, fraternity, communion, and family as an answer to the terrible human temptation to leave our mark on the world by piling violence upon violence, hatred upon hatred.
The stories in this issue are built on time and patience, on investment in ourselves and in each other. They are genuine journeys of covenant and inclusion that take shape in families and sports, in schools and community groups, in churches and summer camps. These are experiences that strike me as providential antidotes to division, to the individualism and loneliness that plague our age—real and deep maladies that afflict our world.
Cristina Tersigni, 2017