Modern day idealisms:Right or just easy?

The young person of today goes through a myriad of deeply varied emotions and struggles with understanding them; how they relate with one another, and which to let go and how to let them go.

We hardly talk about how we feel because the world today requires strength in us, for a race we apparently are running, whose beginning we didn't even know about.

We struggle for relevance and grapple with the understanding that you can have friends and be successful, yet wondering why you lose friends as you grow and if you should fight for them.

We have institutions put in place to discuss our woes in, but more often than not, they either approach our "new-age" problems with condescension, tired motivation, or religious banter.

Christianity asks that you talk to the Lord about it, but the average Christian cannot comfort his friend without undermining his level of faith, or ignoring his current incapability to "see the miracle in this journey".

We are so caught up in this war for survival and relevance that it becomes easy for us to accept the daily moral anomalies the world throws at us, as new and necessary idealisms. The urgency created makes us accept wildly deleterious things as vital for our significance and individuality in this new world.

We fail to see that our fierce morally decadent world is constantly shaping our ideas of what is right or wrong, constantly making us lose our voices, strength of will, and eventually, integrity of purpose.

I came across a word the other day, "paedosexual". A paedosexual is society's description of an adult with sexual urges towards children. I found this sick. Granted, it gave the act or situation a name, but more than that, it made it more permanent.

You see, when you give something a name, it comes alive. This is not to say this reality is not just that, and unfortunately present, but it is hard to ignore the fact that, like many other vices that have become accepted, Paedosexualism, as a word and a thing, will spread and become a common word; the more popular it becomes, the less vile it seems.

With every acceptance of the term, the less the act seems harmful. When we give these names, they become a regular situation, disorder, a way of life. Before our eyes, old men and women take to the streets, fighting for their rights as Paedosexuals, forgetting that before they became that, there were first men, then brothers, fathers or uncles, women, then sisters, mothers and aunts.

Now young parents have to wrap their heads around protecting their kids against certain adults, giving the world one more reason as to why you can't trust your neighbor, one more reason why suspicion is key to survival.

We need to protect our minds. Guard our hearts. The line between wrong and right now creates a blend between the two. Everyone has their own truth and what is starkly wrong is just another person's way of life, truth and reality.

We need to do better by speaking out for things that we know are wrong. I'm glad about how more aware we are about ideas, religions etc. More than that, we need to grow and nurture our strengths of will. Before, we were bullied by old people to think and act a certain way, now, the world with its idealisms has taken their place with an even more ferocious intensity.

I hope that we have the strength of heart to say what is right, the honor to recognize it, the humility to accept it and the integrity to stand for it.

Written by Ezinne Onyeka.

Ezinne Onyeka is a writer and Risk Consultant. She is passionate about human development and welfare as well as emotional intelligence and mental wellbeing in young people.