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I was a bit of a troubled youth myself for a while so I am drawing from my own experiences.
I remember starting a lot of trouble/doing dangerous things simply because I was bored. There are various factors for various people such as out of control emotions, lack of supervision, role models etc. but in my case my friends and I were sick of watching TV, playing video games, reading books, riding bikes to the store etc. None in my crowd were interested in sports. This was the big thing we noticed. Community programs aimed at youth tended to be sports oriented, which alienated us. We didn't care about that stuff. There were so many things that DID interest us that were so hard to find access to. So, we either snuck booze or did some very insane things while learning about chemistry. Some smashing of things we could get away with breaking. Basically we did things that were exciting, ambitious, creative and usually destructive. Had we not felt so frustrated with the various challenges that people of that age face, our activities probably would have been more constructive than destructive.
What would have kept us from doing stupid things was actually pretty straightforward in my eyes. Mentors in things that interested us. I think we put too much emphasis, or perhaps I should say 'expectation' on the education system. There are so many people in a community that have fascinating knowledge about all manner of things and there are always some young people who want to know more abut that and experience it. I think that even if a youth only has a few months to interact with the right mentor (who has an accepting attitude towards them as a person but not necessarily their actions) it makes a huge difference in setting them on the right llife path. Maybe they don't pursue much of an interest in that field, but the human connection that is made contains a certain wisdom of life that cannot be attained from a book or a classroom or even the most tweaked of social programs.
One of my own turning points was when I started doing martial arts about the same time I finished high school (after a long series of events that made me fear for my safety) and it was the beginning of me becoming centred. What started as dealing with threats to my safety became something that had some kind of connection with every other interest I had like cooking, music, cultures, art and so on. These are also things that I would have benefitted greatly from mentorship in but through the starting point of martial arts I found that there is common ground among all of these things in terms of learning the basics and then building upon them and eventually forgetting about the basics and just doing what you do. I also eventually, could see that there is a martial art to business too and now here I am. That is my own story. Everyone has a variety of possible positive paths but I think that connecting with good people who act as mentors at the right time is key. So is sharing the positive experiences with peers.
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Originally Posted by alvinchip
