There have never been so many options, and yet it has rarely been so hard to choose. Many young people today describe the same feeling: too many open roads, too much noise, and the constant doubt of taking the wrong direction.
The restlessness of a generation searching for meaning
The data confirm it worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that one in seven adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 lives with a mental disorder (anxiety and depression top the list) and warns that suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people aged 15 to 29. To this is added something more silent: according to the WHO Commission on Social Connection, adolescents and young people are the group that reports the most loneliness in the world. Behind hyperconnection lies a very old and very present question: why am I here?
Fixing your gaze: a compass so as not to lose your way
Saint Marie Eugénie of Jesus, our foundress, answered that question with a simple image: keeping "your gaze fixed" on a point that directs every step. It is not about having everything resolved, but about knowing where to aim. When we know where north lies, the thousand small decisions cease to be a labyrinth. Her conviction was clear: no one is here by chance; there is a concrete good that only you can accomplish.
Silence, against the "fever of doing everything"
She warned of a surprisingly current risk: the "fever of wanting to do everything." Living in a rush exhausts and disorients us. In response, she proposed something countercultural: to care for the interior life and to set aside moments of silence and prayer in which to meet oneself and God again. Silence is not wasted time; it is the firm ground from which one can then act. And it is bound to a very concrete faithfulness: to inhabit the present, without remaining trapped in the past or paralysed by the future.
You do not walk alone: the spirit of family
To that loneliness which sometimes weighs so heavily, the spirituality of the Assumption responds with the "spirit of family": the certainty that the way is better travelled in company. Friends, a community of faith and adults who help to discern the real from illusion. Sharing the search does not make it less personal; it makes it more luminous.
Be yourself, not a copy
In a culture of filters, Marie Eugénie invites precisely the opposite: "to be oneself as fully as possible." To recognise one's own gifts, to embrace one's own history and roots, and to listen to that "hidden aspiration" of the heart (that desire for something more that screens cannot fill). That is where our personal path begins.
A first step within your reach
Finding your path without losing yourself does not mean never stumbling. It means walking with a compass, with silence, with company and with truth. As Saint Marie Eugénie recalled, even one's own weakness, placed in God's hands, can become strength.
Almudena de la Torre
Communications team
() Photos: Pexels — Darina Belonogova and Masi.*