We are talking to Zoltán Czakó about an innovative county initiative (SPACE) to integrate the youth into adult society. The conversation is led by the fireplace in the touristic heart of Slovakia, the UNESCO world heritage city of Banská Štiavnicaby E&M author Dominik Barabási.
To deepen with uncertainty
Growing up is a difficult task, but it’s inevitable. We have to leave the comfortable school environment and move away from the warm arms of our parents. Our relatively simple life seems to get more and more complicated, which leaves us with a series of unanswered questions. The horrible monster that we just call responsibility is getting closer and closer, starting to completely devour us. Who is there to help? Can anyone explain to me what is happening? What am I meant to do?
Just a little speck of worries we have as a teenager. And today’s traditional educational system still narrows down on possible career paths for students, ignoring the possible emotional effect caused by the changing age. If at least it was presented well, finding a career is not necessarily a one-time occasion and it might not be included in the short list of possibilities given by the teaching facilities. What am I saying? It might never even happen. Someone told me once that the only possible purpose in life is death. I may not completely agree with that, however, I know that we are not meant to plan our life in advance at the age of eighteen. The comfort and simplicity that surrounds us in school motivates us to be like one another, to not deviate from the norm. Moreover, it limits us to be what is expected of us. By that, we are influenced and we don’t entirely know what we want. I believe that the main shaper of our character is novelty, the challenges that we face when we quit our comfort zone. Therefore we need to experience, rather than worry about our future.
When we ask a young adult “what are you planning to become in the future?”, we are not helping. The opposite in fact, we amplify the stress of uncertainty even more. In contrast, if we try to persuade young individuals to question themselves, we are not interfering in their development procedure, we are just giving a push to them. Exactly what the Banská Bystrica region is trying to reach with it’s recently started initiative: SPACE. Something that many other countries could take as an example.
Interview with Zoltán Czakó
Could you introduce yourself briefly?
I studied Psychology in Brno, but I have been living here in Banská Stiavnica for a while now doing different kinds of projects. I was always someone very pensive, the biggest achievements for me are internal ones. Always trying to understand my tendencies and overcoming them. I am starting to know myself very well and it became a highlight in my life to always go deeper, to understand the way I behave, the way I think even more.
What kind of project did you start working on lately?
I was asked lately to work at a community center focusing on the youth: SPACE. The main idea of the initiative is to develop their skills and talents, and help support them in discovering what they like. To help them find a way to live, to see the opportunities if they arrive. Maybe to make life better for them?
What is your role in SPACE?
I am a vocational worker, a psychologist. I want to become the facilitator of the potential of young people. Because they have a lot of potential: they are young, they can be whoever they want, they have the freedom to do whatever they want. And this project wants to give them opportunity and I want to help them find themselves before the world opens for them.
How is this project planning to help youngsters?
Firstly, we are asking them all kinds of questions to form an image of who they are at the moment. We are using their answers to form their possible needs, which we check with them again and again. We are trying to be practical, trying all kinds of methods: proposing activities and experiences that could help them realize what they need. We want to broaden their possibilities, to let them know that life is more than a career.
What do you think youngsters need nowadays?
I think they need what they always needed: grown-ups who have a different approach than their parents or teachers. Because both parents and children have expectations and it is important to have answers from an adult who is just helping without any prejudice or influence. We want to help the youth without judgments, without parenting. We just want to care about them in the difficult age in which they are, when everything seems impossible.
Why do you care?
I care because the young individuals I meet remind me of my young self and I would have loved to have a safe place like what we are providing now. I think the youth takes a central place in politics: they are the base of the country’s future. Therefore they need to be educated and we need to build a strong community of motivated people that want change and to create a better place. Young people should care about the country the most. If we help young people to become satisfied, they will care and help the country.
Why help the country? Do you consider yourself a nationalist?
Sorry, I didn’t mean country. I meant the world, the land and the people we live with. The world is an opportunity to live, I think life offers so much. We don’t consider it as valuable as it is, we tend to forget how precious it is to be alive. People have to live life well and experience it and they only will be able if they will be happy and they only will be happy if they will know themselves. So we need to get them to know themselves.
Were you understood by others as a youngster? Did you understand yourself?
Around the age of eighteen, I started to think about things that no one else around me seemed to think about, and gradually I shared less and less about this inner world which grew inside me and that I didn’t understand at all. But I had a period in my life when I spent a lot of time alone, discovering myself, learning about myself, and thanks to that I understood myself better and better, but it took a very long time and a lot of work. It is a long path, but who knows, I might have been much ahead if I had previously received the kind of help we offer.
The endless advantages of knowing ourselves
What should be our purpose then? Well, certainly not to die, that would be too easy. We can also rule out the seeking of comfort, it wouldn’t take us any further. Zoltán suggests that our purpose is to get to know ourselves, because that’s the only way to be satisfied. And ultimately, if we are satisfied we will be able to care about others and therefore create a stronger community. Maybe Zoltán is right and it turns out that we can only be really happy when we deal with others. What a cliché, right? However, it may not be a coincidence. Commonplaces always have a basis: global warming, hunger, deforestation and we could go on indefinitely, just a few examples as a result of the constantly present selfishness in our society. Something that is increasing thanks to technological advancement and social media platforms, which are starting to take the role of traditional relationships and hide the importance of communities.
Having time and space to think about ourselves and become satisfied seems quite a big deal. It could not only be profitable in an individual way, but it may also act in the public interest, so why don’t we all just do it? The lack of time is nonsense: whenever we are, time is universal, none of us have more or less. The question of livelihood is just a bad excuse, accepting a mediocre job that doesn’t suit us is rather a question of comfort than income. To my mind, the real reason is the fear of change. Time makes us stiffer and stiffer: we become less flexible and habits become the primary source of our security. This is why youth is central to our society, because they shape the future’s frame of mind. Do we want the future to be intolerant? Should it be self-interested? Perhaps frustrated? No, it’s time to lend a helping hand to young adults to make the future a better place.
