On Being Young, Dumb, and Revolutionary by Quetzalli Carrera-López

During my first year, when the war in Gaza had just begun, I ditched studying for an awfully scary midterm to protest Utrecht University’s ties with Israel. I was charged with a need to scream for justice, for what is right. And at dinner, this feeling carried itself into the conversation between my unitmate and me. She told me that student protests were fruitless, and went on to say that the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict” would not be solved by a mildly recognized university in the Netherlands cutting ties with Israel.

The worst part of it all was that I believed her. An overwhelming feeling of helplessness began to flood me, and my body became loose with exhaustion. I sat there playing around with my food and nodded to myself. What was the point of protesting this huge, messy world when it was just that: huge and messy? By then, I had become too tired to rebut and fight back like I once did in my high-school History classes. The world seemed to have slipped through my fingers, and I did not know how to pick it back up.

We are handed this world, from old and papery hands, and are heirs to a rotten future and buried pasts.

Two years later, the genocide raged on, and in the midst of it all, I came across the speech that former Chilean President Salvador Allende gave in 1972 at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico. Allende coined a phrase I had heard before: “Being young and not being a revolutionary is even a biological contradiction”.

Now, more than ever, Allende’s words ring shockingly true. Being young means to behold an absurd, beautiful craziness powerful enough to flip the world on its head. Going against this biological inclination is to rewrite our DNA.

The dichotomy of being young is that we hope to change a life we haven’t lived. We are filled with an ingenious anger, mostly unsupported by experience, but largely defended by our ability to feel—and if we know anything, it’s that this, now, feels wrong. It’s precisely this naïveness that makes the messy heap of politics, destruction, art, lies, truths, anger, history, and injustices seem even slightly tameable.

We are handed this world, from old and papery hands, and are heirs to a rotten future and buried pasts. How, then, are we expected to sit still and swallow our fear? No. The fear creeps up on us, and we birth something passionate, unnamed, but certain. We understand that this, whatever “this” is, as illogical as it may be, is fleeting. If we do not seize this sudden moment, this all-consuming feeling, we might one day lose it. We are young, but not eternal, and our future is far, but also right around the corner. We are in a race against time, we want change, and fast, because if we don’t demand it, it will never arrive.

We carry the charm of being young, an annoying habit of asking why, and being critical of what is to be followed and accepted. We are infused by a sense of urgency. An urgency to love, to change, to kiss, to learn, to go out there—anywhere—and do something, be someone. Deeply seated in our young and growing bones is a burning impatience to dream for something greater—no, something better.

Even when we are told what we already know, that perhaps we do not know at all, we brush off the doubts and rolling eyes because we know something adults have long forgotten and are now too tired to remember. The strong muscles in our legs, the firmness in our spines, and the energy in our spirits make us unrelenting in our dreaming. Our eyes, not yet fully exposed to all the colors of the world, but still observant of its horrors, see things clearly, and we wonder how everyone else appears to ignore it.

No real change has ever really been done by anyone sound. Our wild hopes and crazy demands are what have historically kept struggle alive.

As unreasonable and ridiculous as protesting for an end to a genocide which is thousands of kilometers away might seem, no revolution has ever been sound. No real change has ever really been done by anyone sound. Our wild hopes and crazy demands are what have historically kept struggle alive.

And yet, once life has caught up to us, and we’ve become worn out by routine, once we feel the weight of caring in our hips, we too will forget the passion that drove us to the streets. We, too, will roll our eyes and grimace at the new generation, with their wild energy and pointed critiques. But before this terrifyingly indoctrinating world washes away our clarity, before we learn to forget, we can go out and cry and yell until our throats are raw. And so, when looking back, we will say we were scared, terrified of the burning forests and incessant wars, but at least we weren’t paralyzed with fear.

It is easy to become disillusioned: I was, and many still are. But to be indifferent is one of the most disappointing and sad things to be as unknowing teens and lost 20-year-olds, because as long as we are young and dumb, we must equally live up to our stereotype and be revolutionary.