I don’t think anyone is ready, or perhaps prepared is a better word, for the challenges of tomorrow. Tomorrow is a moving target, as the saying goes, or to put it another way, “there’s always tomorrow”. Tomorrow is somewhere in the future, the “undiscovered country”, and we never really know what is in store.

Some people would like to think that today’s youth will not be able to handle the challenges that are facing humanity in the near or far future. Why is that? I’ll be negative for a moment and list a number of possible reasons why:

- More youth are overweight today than ever before through poor eating habits, more junk foods at their fingertips, and a lack of exercise
- Today’s youth are increasingly illiterate and missing basic skills due to a permissive, hamstrung educational system and absentee parents who just let things continue on in a sorry state
- Today’s youth are lazy and demotivated because they’ve figured out how they can squeak by with a minimum of pain and a maximum of pleasure
- Our world is polluted, overheating, running low on resources, and severely overpopulated in places
- Some people would argue that the diminishing role of communities, family values, and religion are putting young people on a collision course with damnation

There is probably at least a grain of truth in each of these points when you look at them in the aggregate. However, people aren’t all the same. Some are stronger, smarter, and wiser than other people, regardless of their age. Moreover, many of these so-called failings are echoed in the parents and adults of the preceeding generations! I don’t think you can honestly say that the youth are worse than their predecessors, but they are growing up in an environment far different than the ones before.

On the positive side, people of all ages are recognizing the importance of communication and community even though the methods are shifting from physical interaction to a hybrid of physical and virtual community. Young people have incredible access to information, the like of which has never been seen before. I also see people taking steps to improve themselves at any stage of life, so who is to say that eventually some of these hopeless, hapless youth won’t do the same as they become smarter and wiser?

No one can ever really be prepared for the future. No one could have accurately predicted how factors like STDs, computers, the Internet, terrorism, 9/11, cell phones, iPods, global warming, and so on, would unfold. No one could really have known for certain what impact these things would have on our world. You can make educated guesses about the things that will happen and try to prepare for them, but you simply won’t always be right. Just ask the people of New Orleans.

Could our youth be better educated, more disciplined, and wiser about what they will need to do to prepare for the future? Of course, just like the generations that preceeded them. However, necessity is the mother of invention, and I’m certain that when the time and need arise, today’s youth will be just as capable as any other generation to cope with whatever happens.