English
EspañolNo one is born an expert, especially not in the wisdom and art of love. If you do not improvise where your profession is concerned and choose to be trained to exercise it well enough, who do you not do the same within your relationships? Do not regret your failures if you neglected the necessary education to know how to love.
Text
“Who is capable of taking young people seriously? Who helps them to prepare seriously for a great and generous love? Where sex education is concerned, much is at stake.” (The Joy of Love, n.284)
Commentary
We must learn to love. Learn to know its truth and goodness, not its guises and falsehoods. However, who teaches the youth the wisdom and maturity needed to love? Where can they learn it?
Love is knowledge, not ignorance. Among those who try to love each other, errors and ignorance are like slides that lead to the unreal fabrication of the other person, to disappointments and failures. To know each other is to understand how to love each other. It is acquiring the wisdom and artistry proper to the kind of love we attempt to live; that of a couple, familial love between parents and children, between siblings, between grandparents, and grandchildren, or the fascinating world of authentic friendship. This knowledge provides us light and freedom to make the right decisions.
Sexuality education programs have been, for the most part, focused from a preventive stance, for example, teachings oriented toward intercourse and contraceptive praxis. However, we young people are tired of that; we are tired of being treated as selfish beings who are only looking for sexual fun without consequences.
We are made for more, and we know it. We want more truth, less fear, and more courage. We want to learn to build, for we are disoriented in our longing to live a love that fulfills us. Relationships fail far too often. We are left, so early on, with deep wounds, mistrust, disappointments, and sadness, which are slow to heal. We then face an even deeper emptiness than before.
Those of us who dedicate ourselves to teaching should feel challenged by this scenario. It is a matter of educating the emotional life of our youth. The universe of love is decisive because it is where the most profound human relationships are played out; relationships provide us with meaning and the reasons to live – love between couples, between parents and children, between siblings, between grandparents, and grandchildren. From love stems friendship.
What is the use of preparing excellent professionals if they have not developed mature affectivity? What is the use if they do not know how to prevent conflicts and avoid ruptures in their different loving relationships? Professional and social success and earning money will not solve the inner loneliness, the existential emptiness. It will not give them the reasons to live and the underlying happiness.
Let us put the means and the tools at their disposal, not to impose ideologies or doctrines, but to make our youth capable of discovering what it means to love genuinely so that they may make the best decisions, truly personal, free, with a solid foundation.
