Millenial Youth Perspective in Zimbabwe

Image, courtesy of the Gottman Institute, via Tumblr

Job insecurity is an excruciating Hell whose intensity I would not wish on another soul. It's wearying, anxiety-rich and a life-sucking drain as one feels like they are the living and walking dead. The future looks like the abyss, the past is dust blowing, creating dunes from the sands of time and the present is a reminder that you're not dead. It's a place where one is both stateless and status-less but still has the amazing privilege of being alive- as a tangible ghost.

To varying degrees, a good number of people appear to put effort into euphemising, ignoring, isolating or ostracising the disquieting dissonance your presence poses. After all, the snap judgement assumes that, "If you'd made better choices you wouldn't be in this mess. Look at me for example."

So one spirals into silence, depression or alternative activities because those spaces of solace feel safer than being humiliated and blamed for circumstances where decisions were made and acted upon without your prior knowledge, input, nor consent. This is not because one is the victim. It is because they were not privy to the information to begin with. Power, in the hands of the privileged, is maintained through the exclusion of many, limiting access to the few- the principle being, resources are scarce and so only the finest and fittest must steward it with as little interference from others as possible. In the Development world, this is known as 'Social Exclusion'.

So, one trudges on wearily to nowhere and nothing. Eyes glazed over with grief from weeping over lost or dying dreams. The heart's hope seeping out slowly from the cracks. Maybe an epiphany will bring a solution with the dawn. Maybe help will come. However, experience informs you that it most likely won't. So you continue in limbo, rights and all, as a shadow that resembles a human being.

Perpetual uncertainty is an enema to creativity. Yet the sun still shines, the rain still falls, people make love and children are born. Nothing lasts forever, even if it's a long dark night.