National Youth Day Special: Tapping the Gen Z Potential
Gen Z competes for academic excellence, a better salary, and a successful career. Simultaneously, they recognise the futility of pursuing wealth and fame alone. I have seen this tremendous change in the last 10 to 15 years. Young people want to work for a bigger cause. They can see that people with wealth and fame aren’t so happy. And so, Gen Z is becoming more service-oriented. They are more environmentally conscious. They are less consumerist now. Gen Z is intelligent, and intelligent people seek the higher truth. So, today, many of them are walking the path of spirituality, which is a great sign.
Spirituality isn’t a ritual. It isn’t an esoteric subject meant for a few. It is an uplifted state of our being. Spirituality is getting access to the innate strength inside us that helps us sail over difficult situations. Our educational institutions haven’t focused much on the psychology of young people. We haven’t learned about their behavioural patterns or the state of their mental health. We don’t even have an idea about some aspects of our own lives. We only learned about things around us, but very little about ourselves, our minds and emotions. Subjective understanding is as important in life as brushing your teeth every day. Only then can we help our youth as well.
A little spiritual touch and value-based education, or well-ingrained human values, will flip the whole trajectory in a very positive and revolutionary direction. A society has to grow organically. One example of organic growth is respect for others becoming part of the mainstream culture, and patience, faith, and the spirit of service becoming part of the mainstream culture. This has already started to happen to a large extent.
Post-Covid, we noticed our youth swung between aggression and depression. We need to bring down the aggression in them and uplift those who are depressed. See, every 40 seconds, one person is taking their life on this planet. It isn’t fair for us to even tolerate this.
Where does depression come from? The swiftest technique to get depressed is to sit and think only about yourself. We need to encourage our youth to make seva, or selfless service, a part of their nature. Particularly in challenging times, one must be grateful for any opportunity to do seva.
During crises, whether it is the COVID pandemic, war, or natural disasters, people come together to help each other. Today, Europe is going through tremendous pressure since the war began between Russia and Ukraine. They haven’t faced such a crisis since World War II. Distress, fear, and anxiety are everywhere. Prices have shot through the roof. In the midst of all this, our young volunteers of the Art of Living are putting their hearts and souls into helping people on the streets. When the war was more intense, our volunteers helped the refugees who fled from Ukraine. Volunteers and teachers of the Art of Living have provided the physical and moral support that they needed at the time.
We cannot control the events around us, but we can teach our youth some ways to control their breath, and through the breath, their mind and emotions. One of the techniques that we teach everywhere is the ‘Sudarshan Kriya’. Sudarshan means the right vision of who we are, and ‘Kriya’ is purifying action. It produces a deep calm in the mind, while every cell in the body becomes enlivened with energy. This cleansing process powerfully dissolves stress. The same breath that helped Ukrainian soldiers find calm in chaos can help our youth too. In moments of fear, stress, or emotional overwhelm, the breath can be one’s anchor.
In the Art of Living, we put a lot of emphasis on seva, sadhana or spiritual practices, and satsang to uplift the human spirit. Satsangs are gatherings where scattered minds unite through music, meditation, and wisdom to experience a higher state of consciousness. It is heartening to see more and more youth participate in satsangs today. We have been seeing this for the last four decades now. Man needs protection from the changing elements of nature, and so he builds shelter for physical comfort. In the same way, for spiritual and mental comfort, ‘satsang’ is the shelter.
Young people have more experiences than their minds and senses can handle. So they get disillusioned with everything very fast. They have the benefit of having information about everything at their fingertips. They have all the information, and yet they feel empty. If they are on the right track, if they are given the right direction, they will explore more and be more creative. They will become leading entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, and innovators. If this direction isn’t given to them, if they don’t have a purpose in life, then aggression and depression can set in at a very early age. Today, young people are the hope for the world. They have to look for the happiness of the entire humanity. When one person isn’t happy in a family, he pulls down the joy of the entire family. Similarly, if one part of our society is unhappy, others also lose their smiles. So, we all have to work together to create an atmosphere of peace, comfort, confidence, and happiness.
There are two types of happiness. One is the joy you feel when you get something. We have all experienced this as children. When you get a gift, you feel so happy. You experience joy when you get more followers or when you get more money in your bank account.
There is another type of happiness that you get when you contribute to society-the joy of sharing and giving. The joy of giving is more mature. Unless we move from the joy of getting to the joy of contributing to society, we will not experience ultimate satisfaction. The immense satisfaction we get when we wipe tears, when we uplift people around us, is something we all must experience. It not only uplifts society but also our own selves. So this is something that we all have to look into.
