Are You A Wasted Youth?

Youths of today are the future of our tomorrow, they say. But what will you then say when you find out that the majority of youths of today are nothing but already wasted?

There’s fire on the mountain. Something needs to be done to arrest this astronomical increase in the number of wasted youths we are witnessing in our present day.

But first, before we do that, we need to identify who these wasted youths are.

So, how do you identify a wasted youth?

Well, a wasted youth...

Hardly reads

In fact, he does not read. This is one of the easiest ways to spot a wasted youth. Apart from reading his Facebook or twitter updates and maybe his textbooks. That is where his reading stops.

Novels, financial books, journals, even currents affairs is not really his thing. Of course, he’ll proudly and openly tell you he doesn’t have time for any of that nonsense!

Listen to this. If you are suspecting any youth in your vicinity to be a wasted youth, just ask him or her to tell the last novel he actually read and when he read it.

Don’t be surprised to find out that some of them have not read any literature in the past ten years!

Now tell me, how will such a person’s mind grow or develop!?

Readily follows bandwagon

This is probably because following bandwagon is easier. A wasted youth is incapable of having original thought or opinion of his own so you don’t expect him to do anything else except follow popular opinion—even ridiculously insane opinions!

Has no idea of his or her purpose in life.

A wasted youth has no plans for his future. He would rather rely on what his parents, friends, employers, pastors, cult leaders, politicians, etc, tells him will favour him.

But do you really blame him? Because a wasted youth has no purpose for life, he is bound to be a confused being.

And who is the easiest person to push around if not a confused person!

Is very vain

Yes, vain as in primarily concerned with things like sǝx, fashion, football, Facebook...

You know you won’t catch his interest by talking about novels and book. Try sǝx. He will suddenly come alive.

We see it everyday even here on Nairaland. Make an intelligent post on Nairaland or Facebook. Ask an intellectually stimulating question. It will just be as if most of these wasted youths will see it but just jump an’ pass.

Someone is talking about blogging or how to get a Google AdSense account approved; only few people respond. But now, let’s make the topic to be something related to sǝx. Oh yeahhhh, now you come!!! Omo, come see traffic!!! Come see responses...

These youths are so interested in knowing who is having sǝx with who, which celeb is 'doing' another celeb, which celeb is sharing her nudǝ image on Instagram, the latest sǝx positions or styles, the latest sǝx scandal, etc.

Funny isn’t it?

A wasted youth is a confused youth!

But it’s not only sǝx that that easily catches his attention.

For some of them, they like talking about money but not in the sense a reasonable person will talk about it.

Truth is that a wasted youth will like to discuss about how much football stars, movie icons and music stars are making. He will not waste time to calculate for you the worth of most of these stars, or how much their jewels, mansions, cars all cost.

Some wasted youths even take it too far by going into drugs. Isn’t it amazing the number of our youths—both males and females—who are now into smoking ‘Igbo’ these days? That will show you the level of ‘wasted-ness’ engulfing our society today.

One thing most of these youths who have already given their life over to SK don’t know is that the problems you are most likely trying to escape from will never go until you decide to tackle it.

Knows next to nothing about business

Yes. A wasted youth is bereft of business ideas. If you think this is a lie, just challenge any youth around you, you suspect to be wasted to give just one business idea.

Most likely, he or she will go into defensive and start telling you that we all are not supposed to be entrepreneurs.

But I laugh.

Yes, we all cannot be entrepreneurs. But who’s even talking about being an entrepreneur here? I say just give me one... any business idea.

The wasted youths got it all wrong. This is because when you are talking about business to the wasted youth, his wasted mind is already thinking about Dangote.

That’s what business means to him.

Now, who will help me tell a wasted youth that business is simply all about solving people’s problems and providing services that will take care of peoples’ needs?

He won’t take up any responsibility

It is never his fault. He is always ready to pointing fingers. Always looking for someone to blame. He will not waste time to blame his parents, blame his lecturer, blame the government, blame the society at large for not being where he thinks he should be.

What a sense of entitlement!

Let me give you an example how most wasted youths I have come in contact with do think. I do this for fun, by the way.

Just call him aside and ask him how he fared in his exams assuming the result are out.

If he got grade A he’ll say to you, “I got A!”

If he failed, he’ll say to you, “The lecturer gave me F!”

Wasted youth eh... very funny set of people!

Thinks certificate is education

A wasted youth will never fail to remind you that he or she is educated and has a certificate. He’ll be quick to tell you that he is a first class, a 2.1, a 2.2, a master’s degree holder in one course like that.

And I’m like, and so?

Anyone can get a certificate these days. Coupled with the fact that there are so many degree awarding tertiary institutions these days spread everywhere across the country.

Hear me out now O’ ye wasted youth. In our today’s evolving world, your certificate is total bunkum. It doesn’t—and shouldn’t—count for much nowadays, if you really want us to call a spade a spade.

What I want you to know and start pondering upon is this: what can I do with the knowledge this certificate I am holding represents.

Did you get that?

Very much afraid

When you encounter a wasted youth, don’t be fooled by the way he might be talking (or even acting) tough all in an attempt just to prove that they are tough, brave or courageous, truth is, a wasted youth is not bold at all.

Just watch him closely and you’ll soon discover that in reality, a wasted youth is always afraid of something.

Afraid to start a business. Afraid to voice his true opinion. Afraid to tell their lectures to stop teaching them nonsense. Afraid to stand up for their right even when such right is being trampled upon. Afraid of standing out. Afraid of failure. Afraid to call a spade a spade...

Dammit!

Being embarrassingly timid and always ready to play it safe, they will rather look for someone to hide behind and start making the loudest noise like the empty barrel they truly are.

It’s a shame.

Knows next to nothing about governance

Who’s your local government chairmen? How many local government areas are there in your state? How many legislators are there in your state assembly? What is the name of the deputy governor of your state? Where is the headquarters of your local government located? How much did your particular state and local government get from the shared federal allocation? What present projects are going on in your state and how far have they been completed? What is the name of the Chief Judge of your state? What do you know about Nigeria’s constitution?

A wasted youth may not have any answer to any of these questions.

But you wouldn’t blame him though.

To most wasted youths, governance is all about power of incumbency, sharing money and asking which ethnic, Geo-political area or political party a particular government official is from.

Prefers having a job to having a career or owning a business

Tell a wasted youth you started your own business, he’ll tell you congrats in a very lukewarm manner.

But tell him you finally got that job, and watch as he’ll exclaim and rejoice for you!

The job mentality of most of our wasted youths can be killing at times. It doesn’t even matter to them the nature of the job or whether you will be fulfilling your career goals in that very job or not.

As long as say your money go dey enta na at the end of the month, no wahala.

Lacks initiative

In fact, this is why he cannot really start anything meaningful on his own. He waits to be told what to do. He is a conformer so don’t expect him to challenge the status quo. He cannot take any risk simply because he doesn’t see any point in it.

A wasted youth would rather complain and blame someone rather than finding a solution to that particular problem simply because he cannot make any valuable suggestion.

His lack of initiative can also mean that he is quite indecisive. In fact, if you have the misfortune to interact with some of our wasted youths, you will easily discern that a wasted youth will readily prefer you make ALL the decisions for him.

You know why?

Of course, so that he can easily blame you if things don’t turn out fine or as planned.

You have to be very careful when dealing with all these wasted youths!

Believes in prayers so much

Now this is not supposed to be a bad thing, right?

You’re right. It is not a bad thing. Problem is just that for a wasted youth, prayer is the answer to most if not all of his problems.

Tell him that your boyfriend is cheating on you and he will tell you to put in prayer. Tell him that you need some money to start a business; he will tell you to put it in prayer. Tell him that your car just developed some fault; he will tell you to put in prayer.

You see where this is going?

To a wasted youth, he would rather pray than roll up his sleeves to get down to the nitty-gritty of solving the problem at hand.

But you already know why he’s like this, don’t you?

Of course.

Keeps Company of equally wasted friends

Who are your friends? How do you or they motivate each other? What kind of discussions are you guys having most of the time?

There is a theory that you are the average of five people you are mostly in contact with. This theory is inline with the popular law of averages.

So who are your friends again?

How do you guys add to each other person’s lives?

Can you now see why you have remained wasted simply because a typical wasted youth is always in the company of his equally wasted friends.

And the result?

Of course, what else if not more and more “wasted-ness”!

Hides his ignorance behind arrogance

Similar to hiding himself inside a group to spew complete bunkum, a wasted youth is often found to be hiding his ignorance behind his disgusting braggadocio.

Somehow, a wasted youth believes he can do no wrong. He strongly though foolishly believes he knows everything which means there’s really nothing you can teach him.

Any attempt you make in trying to explain certain things will be met with a very strong opposition because most times when you try to elucidate some things for him, rather than listening to what you have to say, he will start questioning your right to be in the position to even think you can educate him.

Should you make the mistake of telling him why he should at least listen to what you have to say, at the point he will definitely tell you that it is his life and not yours.

In other words, you can go and fućk yourself!

We see it here most times on nairaland, you try to correct someone probably because of his wrong grammar or you try to remind him to get his facts right.

A typical wasted youth will not waste time to tell things like wetin consign you? Is it your English? At least, you understood what I am trying to say, didn’t you?

His arrogance can discourage you in trying further to help him get over his ignorance.

But you shouldn’t have bothered yourself.

Experience they say is the best teacher and I strongly believe a time will come and he will surely learn.

But then, like you and I know, problem is that by the time he finally realizes how his ignorance is setting him back, he may have done a lot of damage not only to himself but to others as well.

Consumption prone

A wasted youth is all about consumption. His mantra: Give us this day our daily bread. Share the money now! Let’s tomorrow will think for itself.

Like a chronic glutton, you can easily bait him with anything that is directly or indirectly consumable – drugs, alcohol, women, money, easy money, free things, you name it!

He has little or no plans for tomorrow... for his future.

It is this his disgusting propensity to consume that often discourages him from trying to be creative on his own but rather he will prefer to be on the constant look out for the easy way out.

No wonder most wasted youths have this fantastically corrupt mindset!

No achiever

A wasted youth is not an achiever at all.

A wasted youth doesn’t want his name to be etched in the sands of time.

Look around you. How many youths do you know their name as great achievers. None, right?

You now see what I am saying?

A wasted youth has low goals. Very low goals, in fact. For him, let him just get a ‘good’ job, buy a nice car, get married, have a couple of kids and life is made.

Good. But if you really really check it, he’s doing nothing special with his life but keeping up with all the other Jones in his life.

But I put it to you wasted youths, how will you be remembered when you are gone? Or maybe—who knows—it doesn’t matter to you anyway?