Those who don't want to do anything (while we dismantle their future)

Scroll through your feed. Three seconds on a video of kittens, two on an awkward dance generated by yet another algorithm hungry for cheap dopamine. Then, as punctual as a tax bill on August 15th, there it is: the archaeologist's comment about "things were better back then," strictly from the couch, with a secure profile and halting grammar.

«"Young people today don't want to do anything anymore. They spend all day glued to their phones.".

Classic. Reassuring. A real cognitive comfort food.

Because thinking this way gets us out of trouble, cleanses our consciences at 40 degrees Celsius with a rapid spin cycle. If they are an army of apathetic zombies, lobotomized by eight-second vertical clips, then we are automatically absolved. We, the glorious "we worked our asses off" generation, we who invented the modern world through sacrifice and grazed knees.

Bullshit. Gigantic, very comfortable, colossal bullshit.

Let's ask ourselves a serious question, before passing out on the sofa with yet another medium-sized beer in hand: what kind of planet we have prepared for these kids? How much social rubbish, how much existential precariousness, how much hypocrisy did we throw it on their heads before demanding that they jump up and sing the Ode to Joy?

It's too easy to point our finger at their touchscreens. The paradox is that on that black, reflective screen is our face: we were the ones who put it between their fingers at three years old just to silence them at the pizzeria. We raised them on bread and notifications, we explained to them that appearances beat substance and that a virtual heart weighs more than a handshake. And today, with cheap cynicism, we complain if they keep their necks bent at ninety degrees?

Deluded.

The truth is much harsher: It's not them who are lazy, it's us who have become completely inadequate at transmitting the desire to do.

To light a fire, you need a real, living, visceral spark. And you can't set anyone's soul ablaze if you're only filled with the gray dust of resentment and the comfortable posture of someone judging from the heights of their own nothingness. If since childhood they've seen you staring into the distance at a screen, chasing fluff, where the hell are they supposed to get that passion?

Then, fortunately, reality decides to throw you an educational slap. It happens when you close your apps, leave the digital fast food bubble, and dive into the mud of the real world.

Yesterday I was in Noventa, under a blazing sun, in the courtyard of the patronage center. The iron structure of the Bettola had to be erected for the festival. No roundtable discussions on the great systems, no motivational slides: heavy, sharp corrugated sheets, hot galvanized steel tubes, wooden platforms that had to fit together perfectly, dust, grease, wrenches, and a lot of hard work. Enough to give you calluses in twenty minutes flat.

And who was there to break their backs? They were there.

The supposed slackers. The kids with no future. Those who, according to the bar know-it-alls, couldn't tell a screw from a bolt.

I watched them slip on work gloves without a second thought and get their shirts dirty alongside adults and retirees who could have been their grandparents. I watched them climb wooden ladders to secure a beam five meters up, balancing and holding sheets of metal in groups of two or three, coordinating with a simple eye movement rather than a voice command. They loaded, pushed, tightened nuts, and inhaled dust for hours. But above all, damn it: they smiled.

There was a clear, physical, contagious joy in that mess of steel and sweat. A handcrafted complicity that no social media manager will ever be able to replicate, because it belongs to the flesh, the bones, the shared effort for a common goal.

In Noventa, we're not talking about statistical exceptions or accidental heroes. There's a vibrant, vibrant community of young people involved in groups, entertainment, volunteering, and genuine community. They make noise with action, not with thumb-tacked complaints. They exist, they know how to work, and they know how to build.

So, to all the Sunday preachers who spend their time writing eulogies for the new generations, I give you some unsolicited advice: stop keeping them under a glass bell jar and dissecting their defects..

Take your boys and send them to Bettola to assemble some irons.

Give him true trust, give him a key to thirteen, leave him the freedom to mess up a puzzle, to graze a knee and to understand the value of time spent doing something for others..

You will see that the spark goes off instantly.

You know who was missing? The one who complains while watching others work, simply pointing at the dust. Because we were all there getting our hands dirty with them.

I seek beauty everywhere. And if I find it printed on the tired smile of a dust-covered boy who's just finished building something real, I hold on to it.