One might even say alright if that wasn’t the sort of tired cliche that immediately leads to eye rolling and general disengagement.
It would come as little shock to those that best know me to learn that I’ve always felt that I’m not particularly adept at adulting.
Oh sure, I’ve checked a lot of the boxes. Married. Kid. Mortgage. Car payments. Life insurance. The ability to tie a tie. I even know I should have a will but don’t, just like most proper adults.
But I’ve always felt like a good size chunk of me is still flailing around in some sort of protracted studenthood. I am far more comfortable in a pair of cords and a hoodie than I am in business casual attire. I keep an ever-growing stash of toys on my desk at work. I dislike shaving so I often just don’t do it, socially-acceptable presentation be damned.
And, to be perfectly honest, I revel in the cognitive dissonance of it all. I like being both youth and adult like some sort of underfunded Schrödinger study that never met its inevitable resolution.
Because I think “the kids”— students, youth or whatever you want to call them — have this enviable and entirely necessary way of seeing the world that most of us adults have long since abandoned. There’s an energy and a sense of righteousness and indignance that I find infectious. A blend of ambition and rebellion that is hard to describe but oh so easy to feel when you’re in their midst.
It’s why I’ve always taken every opportunity to speak to students and it’s why I’m absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to teach at my alma mater these days.
But this piece isn’t about me
He writes, after spewing out 250 words of self-important preamble.
Canada is in the midst of a federal election campaign. The longest such campaign in modern Canadian history, in fact. So for more than 10 weeks as of the time of writing this, we’ve been subjected to platform launches and issue debates and an endless series of thinkpieces about what this election means for every conceivable interest group and population segment.
We’ve talked about the economy and refugees and the niqab for some reason; we’ve talked about not talking about murdered and missing indigenous women and the environment. And we’ve mostly not talked about not talking to young voters except for the perfunctory recognition that parties don’t speak to young people because young people don’t vote.
<Elton> It’s the circle of life! </Elton>
And as someone who is both the ideal target voter for the mainstream parties (middle class married suburban homeowner, baby, I get ALL THE TAX CREDITS) and someone who gets to immerse himself in the student world once a week, I am painfully aware of this disconnect.
Canada needs the energy and ideas of its youngest voting citizens. We also need them to grow up and become the next wave of engaged citizenry too, admittedly, but even more important than that we need them right now. This country needs their perspective. We need their idealism. We need their fucking lifeblood.
But year in and year out, they don’t vote.
And that’s not a condemnation of them, to be clear. It’s a condemnation of us and a scathing one at that. It’s nothing short of a indictment of a system that not only doesn’t serve them it actively excludes them.
Sure, it’s not only on us. Youth apathy is a thing and, to some degree, it’s incumbent on them to meet us halfway here. But to sit atop our very high horses and chastise them for refusing to play by our rules ignores the fact that asking them to fit their square peg selves into our round holes strips away much of what makes their perspective so unique and necessary in the first place.
The sad fact is that our system only rewards those who exhibit the ability to wield power within it. So instead I’ve found myself saying this one simple thing to my students with something bordering on unhealthy obsession over the past few weeks.
Vote.
Vote even if none of the parties truly speak to you.
Vote because none of the parties truly speak to you.
Vote because the deck has been so stacked against you that voting is itself an act of fucking subversion.
We/they expect 90% of you to be apathetic and we/they expect 5% of the 10% that isn’t apathetic to make banners and protest and demonstrate and throw bottles and stones.
So do the unexpected: Vote.
Vote in such record numbers that you collectively kick down the fucking door, step into the foyer and declare that you’re here and you’re not going away.
There’s an opportunity looming; we’re likely headed to a minority government and an unsustainable minority at that. We’re going to have more elections before you graduate from being a young voter to a grown up.
So make them listen. Make them hear. And when the House falls and we’re back into this nonsense again, make them pander. Become part of the system then help save the system from itself.
We/they need you. Even if we/they don’t know it yet.