They Will Inherit What We Leave Behind

I saw a photograph recently of Winona LaDuke at 18 years old, speaking at an international conference on Indigenous peoples.

Eighteen.

It stopped me for a moment.

Then I thought about Greta Thunberg, who began speaking publicly about climate change when she was still a teenager.

Different women. Different generations. Different issues. Different approaches.

This isn't about agreeing with everything either of them has ever said or done.

It is about recognizing something we adults too often forget.

Young people are equal human beings.

Not someday.

Now.

They have voices. They have ideas. They have fears, hopes, observations and experiences that matter. They can challenge systems, influence societies and sometimes see things adults have spent decades learning to accept.

And eventually, they will inherit everything we leave behind.

Young People Are Not Human Beings in Waiting

We constantly tell young people that they are "the future."

It sounds respectful.

But sometimes I wonder whether it actually gives us permission not to listen to them in the present.

When young people challenge us, we have a long list of reasons their opinions supposedly don't carry the same weight.

You're too young.

You haven't worked long enough.

You haven't paid enough taxes.

You haven't raised children.

You haven't experienced the real world.

Wait until you're older.

There is absolutely wisdom that comes with age. I know things now that I couldn't possibly have understood at 18.

But there is another side to experience.

Sometimes experience teaches us to accept things.

We become accustomed to poverty.

We become accustomed to homelessness.

We become accustomed to people working full time and struggling to afford housing.

We become accustomed to polluted water and damaged ecosystems.

We become accustomed to war.

We become accustomed to inequality.

We learn how the system works, and somewhere along the way we can stop asking whether it should work that way at all.

Then a young person walks into the conversation and asks one of the most powerful questions there is:

Why?

Why do we accept this?

And sometimes we don't have a very good answer.

Age Doesn't Determine Human Worth

Young people can be wrong.

Of course they can.

So can I.

So can parents.

So can elders.

So can professors.

So can politicians.

So can scientists.

So can CEOs.

Listening to young people doesn't mean treating everything they say as unquestionable truth.

Equality has never meant immunity from disagreement.

It means their age does not make their humanity worth less.

It means disagreement should be about the idea, not whether the person has accumulated enough birthdays to deserve an opinion.

Winona LaDuke didn't suddenly acquire a voice when she became an established adult.

She had one at 18.

Greta Thunberg didn't need to become a politician or climate scientist before she was allowed to care deeply about the world she would inherit.

We don't have to agree with everything they say to recognize that.

We Are Temporary

There is another reason young voices matter.

Those of us making decisions today aren't going to be here forever.

That's simply reality.

Parents grow old.

Politicians leave office.

Executives retire.

Generations pass away.

Eventually, all of us become history.

But our decisions don't disappear with us.

The infrastructure remains.

The national debt remains.

The housing we built, or failed to build, remains.

The institutions remain.

The laws remain.

The pollution remains.

The technology remains.

The communities we strengthened or neglected remain.

The ecosystems we protected or destroyed remain.

The climate we altered remains.

Young people inherit those things.

Literally.

We are making decisions today about a world that eventually will belong entirely to people younger than us.

Surely they deserve a meaningful voice in deciding what that world looks like.

They Are Already Living With Our Decisions

This is why I have become uncomfortable with saying young people are "our future."

They are also our present.

A teenager doesn't have to wait until adulthood for housing costs to affect their family.

A child doesn't need a mortgage to experience a housing crisis.

Young people experience poverty.

They experience discrimination.

They experience our education systems.

They experience mental health pressures.

They experience violence.

They experience environmental changes.

They experience decisions made by governments they may not even be old enough to vote for or against.

The fact that someone doesn't yet possess formal political power doesn't mean political decisions aren't already shaping their life.

Voting rights and human worth are not the same thing.

How Many Voices Do We Never Hear?

For every young person like Winona LaDuke or Greta Thunberg whose voice eventually reaches millions, there are countless others whose names we'll never know.

The teenager who notices something wrong in their community.

The young worker wondering why working hard doesn't seem enough to build a secure life anymore.

The student wondering whether home ownership will ever be realistic.

The young Indigenous person asking what reconciliation will actually mean during their lifetime.

The child looking at something adults have normalized and simply asking why.

They don't all need microphones.

They don't all need movements.

They don't all need millions of followers.

And they certainly don't all need to become activists.

They need to know something much simpler.

Your voice matters.

You are allowed to question us.

You are allowed to disagree with us.

You are allowed to change your mind.

You are allowed to be wrong.

And sometimes you may be right when every adult in the room tells you that you're wrong.

What Are We Leaving Behind?

Maybe this is ultimately the question every generation should have to answer.

Not simply how much wealth did we create?

How high did GDP grow?

How well did the stock market perform?

Which political party won?

But:

What did we leave behind?

Did we leave young people affordable places to live?

Clean drinking water?

Healthy communities?

Functional institutions?

Opportunities to build lives of their own?

A livable planet?

Did we teach them how to think, or merely what to think?

Did we make room for their voices?

Did we listen when they told us something wasn't working?

Because eventually we won't be here to argue about it anymore.

They will.

And the world they inhabit will contain the consequences of decisions we are making right now.

Young people don't need our permission to matter.

They already do.

They don't need to wait their turn to have a voice.

They already have one.

Our responsibility isn't to speak for them.

It is to make sure they have the freedom, security and opportunity to speak for themselves.

And perhaps, once in a while, to stop talking long enough to listen.