Regardless of the changing times the youth has to uphold the ideals and aspirations of the nation and its people, of seeking truth frim facts and to assert the need of a national rejuvenation.
For as youths as seen as the most active and energetic element, it is worthy to call then as hope and future of the nation and its people. True that with their passion and creativity the youth should be endowned with rare opportunities to achieve things and greater responsibiities to fulfill to make communities thrive, a nation to prosper, and families to enjoy its blessings.
However, in this current order this note would say that the youth has really having a big task to fulfill. In a time that corrupt officials, cruel despots, of leaders whose self-interests prevailed over those of the people and the nation, it becomes a duty for the youth to expose and oppose them by any means necessarily. By looking back at history the ones called youthful and passionate have taken the weapon be it the pen or the gun to assert reforms and to inspire people, especially the downtrodden to revolt against oppressors local or foreign alike. It is the youth who, despite living dangerously has willing to jump into the abyss as necessarily in pursuit of freedom and justice to the country.
But the passion and fire of the youth doesn't just limit to that of attacking the corrupt and of the despotic. Since the duty of the youth is to save the nation so is to be creative in promoting a future that the nation and its people truly deserves and benefits from it. The promotion of arts, the advancement of sciences, are driven by the need "to save the nation" from its decay whether being a vassal of bigger entities or from cruel despots who deprived the nation its right for self-determination and development. To quote Imam Khomeini, that "You, the young students and the rest of the youth, are my hope and the harbingers of good tidings. You, the masses of young people, the masses of students, are my hope." For they're "full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the at eight or nine in the morning" as Mao said, and with eagerness to learn and fight being "the hope of the future" as what Rizal expressed, why deny them the right to build, create, and fight for the country being cherished and loved but instead feeding them something that maketh the youth, family, community, and nation into ruin? Such deterioration of passion has created a generation of disinterested and exploitable beings, trapped in a cycle of a continuing past while few dared to resist just to take back the future from an exploiting and cruel order.
Ironically, that order would parrot Rizal or any other personality expressing hopes on the present and future generations. But in seeing the inconveniences of the present, should these generations be contented in a cycle of being exploited? No! Like Rizal in his El Filibusterismo he asked if "Where are the young who must dedicate their roseate hours, their illusions and enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where are they who must generously spill their blood to wash away so much shame, so many crimes, so much abomination? Pure and spotless must be the victim for the holocaust to be acceptable. Where are you, you children who must embody the vigor of life that has fled from your veins, the purity of ideas that has become in our minds and the fire of enthusiasm that has gone out in our hearts? We await you, Oh youth! Come, we await you!"
Sorry to make this note long, but the youth, with its passion, creativity, and thirst for knowledge, adventure, and real social and national change are themselves torchbearers, builders, and fighters of a nation's destiny.