After spending an evening with my aunt and my eldest cousin who has been visiting town for a few weeks, I was quite touched to receive a drawing made by my 7 year old niece that read "I Love You".
I must say I have grown fairly fond of these little kids after having met them a few times this summer. There's a whole bunch, four of them in fact, and they are a force to reckon with. Whether they are playing tennis in their grandparents' bedroom or whether they are outside coaxing their uncle to take them for a ride on his bike, these kids never sit still.
Except when it is lunch time and they are called to attention.
It was during this lunch interlude, while I was hovering about the place, that the realisation dawned on me that a whole new generation of future world leaders, artists and thinkers was in the process of being created. Up until that moment they were just a bunch of cute kids horsing around, but it wasn't until my niece told me, with a look of firm determination in her eyes, that she wants to be a doctor when she grows up or my three year old nephew's constant protests to my calling him a superhero when he would much rather be called a policeman, did I realise that this is definitely a capable lot.
While our millennial generation grapples with the passing of the baton from our parents, while we are stepping out into a hostile world armed with enough knowledge and determination to improve it, widen the scope of existing cultures through our art and intellect. Unbeknownst to us, a successive generation is being reared. They are there in schools, in homes, in society. Unlike us millennials, upon whom social media was thrusted without any trigger warning, this generation will grow up in a world of social media. From a young age they will understand the power of mass influence and who knows, maybe they will be the generation that puts a capstone on the social restructuring that we millennials have been trying to bring about in a post-Recession world. But what I do know for certain however, is that if this lot sitting in front of me having their lunch spooned into their mouths, are specimens of what is to come, then I can safely say the future of this world is in good hands.
