Last
Friday Theo, Maya, Billy (our young friend next door) and I were blessed to
experience a memorable performance by powerful Grenadian youth. Voices of the
Daring Youth spoke of courage, strength and hope. Voices of the Daring Youth
demonstrated personal and collective power in imparting vital lessons, ideas,
morals, teachings of the heart and mind. Voices of the Daring Youth spoke of justice
in a world of injustice; of youth breaking free from attitudes and behaviors
predicted, subscribed, ratified, solidified by the worlds all around them.
Voices
of the Daring Youth was a spoken word production involving talented, positive,
brilliant, brave youth coming together to share the power of the word, the
power of the collective in giving space to youth and the teachings they hold within. Some of the voices spoke of love, intimate
love, the kind of love we perhaps all pray for, the kind of love where two
people respect and hold one another in great reverie. Some of the voices supported,
encouraged women to speak out, to walk away from the kind of touches that
shatter the very interior of our souls, to find another kind of touch, a touch
that speaks of the spirit living within.
Some of the voices moved from the
personal to the political questioning negative minds, boxed in minds, limited,
socialized, brutalized minds that continue to confine society’s stone view of youth.
Some of the voices questioned development, the kind that affects all of us, the
kind we let dictate the way forward, the kind that begs the question ‘for who and by whom?’. Some of the voices shouted, for too long schools have been spaces to colonize not liberate
minds; promote habitual conditioned patriarchal notions of who and how youth
should be, think, feel.
I
am deeply grateful for last Friday night’s performance as it restored hope,
critical hope, the kind of hope that embraces the positive and transforms the
negative. Positivity ruled the
evening tearing down the norm of negativity. Last
Friday night was proof of what we all can do if we can find the courage and
compassion to step out of our busy habitual lives and step into the spotlight
of being more than our individual selves, more than what society predicts, more
than what our conditioned minds tell us.
Thank
you Voices of the Daring Youth for picking up the mic, for sharing with us your voices, your hope, your critical hope in a time when the world is in desperate need!
