Young Adults
We young adults are deeply affected by all that is happening in the world. Many of us are at the forefront of fighting for change. We are working on racism, climate change, women’s liberation, the rights of immigrants and refugees, ending war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and more.
Capitalism has become less stable. Even more than before, it cannot assure people’s safety and security. More of us young adults are realizing that we have to make major changes if we want to thrive in the future. If we do not take action, the world will be unable to support us as we get older. Climate change throws into question the assumption that many of us grew up with—that if we did everything “right” and looked out for ourselves, we’d be okay. It’s becoming clear that we need collective solutions to collective problems like climate change. We must think outside of what we can do individually and organize people to act collectively.
The capitalist system can support fewer and fewer people to have “successful” individual lives with “good” jobs that allow them to support a family, and so on. We young adults are faced with two options: to try harder to “make it” in a system that allows only a few people to be “successful” or to try to find alternatives to the system and change it.
Many of us are transient. Our lives change quickly. This can make it hard for us to stay rooted in the RC Community over long periods of time, which makes it harder to develop the relationships we need to take more RC leadership and use RC most effectively. Our Communities have not always figured out how to support our leadership. The instability of our lives combined with our distress patterns can restimulate people.
A priority for young adults is to get our constituency ready to lead the RC Community. To do this we need a strong group of young adult leaders who are committed to taking such leadership, who have a deep understanding of RC, and who have strong relationships with each other and with older leaders.
As young adults we need to take big stands in the world. We also need to take big stands against the distress patterns in our minds. Taking RC leadership will push us against our distresses. If at the same time we move things forward in the wide world, we will see more clearly which battles we need to fight in the present and which are the old battles we need to fight in our minds.
Brookline, Massachusetts, USA
(Present Time 188, July 2017)