YOUTH AND SOCIETY
HOW TO FACE THE NEW YEAR
A New Year is just around the corner. Yes, it is a time for joy and celebration, but these last a matter of days. The excitement of Christmas, the presents, and the holidays, subside, and are succeeded by the previous routine. It is then, that young people face the New Year with trepidation and uncertainty. You might wonder, why should they feel like that? The adolescents and the people who enter the period of early adulthood, have a very critical and penetrating mind, and understand that every day of the year cannot possibly be filled with pleasures and excitement. There will be days which are difficult, painful to the degree which make one unhappy, depressed, desperate. For this very reason young people must prepare their defences – a happy outlook, decisions made which one strives to make them realities, and particularly an outlook of optimism.
Certainly, there will be people who say that optimism makes you wear rose-tinted glasses, so you do not feel or understand reality. On the contrary, the optimist is better equipped to face difficulties in life, because he starts his efforts several steps ahead of his peers. His weapons are courage and hope. But neither optimism, or courage or hope, can sometimes save the young person from misfortune, or disaster. The only form of optimism which cannot be defeated by any other power in this world, is that which derives from the person of Jesus Christ. Such optimism does not wither, either in good or trying times. Why? Because it is the outcome of a conscious Christian life. It fills the heart with the certainty that the Divine Providence of God controls and takes care of every event in the life of those who trust in Him. The Faith of the devout becomes informed that whatever happens, at the end the victor shall be Jesus and His truth.
Having fortified himself with such powerful psychological armaments, the young person does not panic nor does he abandon the fight in the face of difficulties. He has adopted the optimism of the Psalmist: “The Lord is my light and my salvation: Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life” (Psalm 27′ 1).
Source: December-January 2014 Lychnos Edition