In the face of these children (because we are talking about children…), Trump in Beijing, Mitsotakis at the New Democracy conference, and the squabbles on the Left between the PASOK and Tsipras factions pale into insignificance.
Why did they think life wasn’t worth living? What were they feeling? Despair? Desperation? Fear? Disappointment?
But what was it that drove them to despair, that disappointed them so? What were they scared of? What made them blind to the future opening up before them?
Even in the worst-case scenario, what 17-year-old with their whole life ahead of them could believe there was something better waiting for them on the horizon?
What teenager has been convinced life’s journey should come to such a quick and joyless end? And what life has run its course at 17?
I have no answers to these questions, nor will I commit the sacrilege of seeking the answers I lack.
But there is one thing I’m certain of. That no 17-year-old is fated to jump to their deaths.
And that if they do, the responsibility lies elsewhere. No, an entire society is to blame.
A society which, for some reason or many, led them into a dead end. That plunged them into despair—I mustn’t shy away from the word…
And that society will now continue along its way, untroubled. Applauding at party conferences or idly watching the news. Holding elections, forming governments, digging up scandals and booing the guilty, voting for and against.
But no one can put those kids back in their parents’ arms, back in their teenage bedrooms.
No one will hear them chattering away in their classroom ever again. Those desks of carefree innocence seemingly harbor mortal perils of which we, who were once children ourselves and now think ourselves grown-up, remain totally unaware.
As the great Savvopoulos used to sing.
You don’t know what to play the kids,
They know it all anyway.
And if you don’t know what to play, if you’ve nothing to say and nothing to tell them, you’d best keep your mouth shut.
