Every generation wants life to become easier for the generation that follows. Parents work so their children will not carry the same burdens. Governments promise better services. Technology removes inconvenience. Education is expected to open doors that were previously closed.

There is nothing wrong with this desire. Preventable suffering should be prevented. Poverty is not morally superior to prosperity, and exhaustion is not evidence of virtue.

But a dangerous confusion begins when the reduction of suffering becomes the elimination of every difficulty. A society may start by protecting young people from unnecessary hardship and end by protecting them from the experiences required to become adults.

Comfort is a good servant, but a disastrous highest value.

When comfort becomes the standard by which every demand is judged, responsibility begins to look oppressive, discipline feels unnatural and sacrifice appears foolish. The person no longer asks, “What must I become capable of carrying?” He asks only, “Why should anything be difficult for me?”

That question does not produce freedom. It produces dependence.

Adulthood begins where excuses end

A child naturally experiences the world through appetite. He wants what feels good now and resists what feels difficult. The task of upbringing is not to shame this instinct, but to transform it.

An adult learns to act according to obligations that do not disappear when motivation disappears. He works when the work is boring, tells the truth when lying would be easier and restrains himself when impulse demands satisfaction.

Adulthood is therefore not simply a biological stage. It is a moral achievement: the ability to govern oneself well enough that other people can safely depend on you.

A person may be thirty years old and remain psychologically adolescent if every failure is someone else’s fault, every limit is an insult and every obligation is accepted only when it brings immediate reward.

Conversely, a young person begins becoming an adult the moment he can say: “This is difficult, but it is mine to carry.”

Not all suffering is meaningful

It is important to be precise. Suffering does not automatically create character. It can also traumatize, deform and destroy. Pointless bureaucracy, humiliation, exploitation and preventable deprivation should not be romanticized.

A society that excuses avoidable hardship by calling it character-building is not serious about character. It is often avoiding its own responsibility to improve institutions.

But the opposite error is equally destructive: assuming that anything painful is harmful.

Training is painful. Honest correction is painful. Delayed gratification is painful. Caring for a sick relative, raising children, mastering a craft and admitting a serious mistake are painful. They are also among the experiences through which a person becomes less selfish and more capable.

The task is not to eliminate difficulty. It is to distinguish degrading suffering from formative hardship.

Degrading suffering breaks people for no worthy purpose. Formative hardship asks them to grow toward a responsibility that matters.

A culture of rescue creates permanent children

When every consequence is removed, behaviour stops improving. The student who is repeatedly excused for unfinished work learns that deadlines are fictional. The employee whose carelessness is always covered by others learns that competence is optional. The family member rescued from every reckless decision learns that love means protection from reality.

Compassion without standards becomes cooperation with weakness.

This does not mean abandoning people when they fail. It means helping them in a way that restores responsibility instead of replacing it.

A useful question is: after receiving help, is this person more capable of standing, or more skilled at demanding to be carried?

Real help strengthens agency. False help rewards helplessness.

Families, schools and public institutions must understand this distinction. Otherwise, they may spend enormous energy supporting people while quietly training them to remain dependent.

Discipline is freedom in its practical form

Discipline is often described as a restriction on freedom. In reality, self-discipline is what makes durable freedom possible.

The person who cannot control spending is controlled by debt. The person who cannot control appetite is controlled by appetite. The person who cannot tolerate boredom is controlled by distraction. The person who cannot hear criticism is controlled by ego.

Freedom does not mean having no limits. It means developing enough inner order that every impulse does not become a command.

This is why small disciplines matter. Waking when one intended to wake, keeping a workspace in order, finishing a task before seeking entertainment and respecting another person’s time may look trivial. Together, they teach the mind that intention can govern impulse.

A nation composed of people who cannot govern themselves will demand endless external management. Rules multiply because trust disappears. Supervision expands because promises mean little. Institutions become slower because every responsibility requires enforcement.

Personal discipline is therefore not merely private self-improvement. It is part of a country’s institutional capital.

The digital world industrializes avoidance

Previous generations had their own forms of escape. The present generation, however, carries an entire avoidance industry in its pocket.

Every moment of boredom can be interrupted. Every uncomfortable thought can be buried under video, outrage, gossip or endless comparison. Attention is harvested by systems designed to make stopping difficult.

The result is not simply wasted time. It is a reduced capacity to remain present when life is slow, uncertain or demanding.

Serious work requires sustained attention before reward appears. Relationships require conversations that cannot be edited into short clips. Learning requires confusion and repetition. Nation-building is measured in years and decades, not notifications.

A mind trained to expect constant stimulation will experience ordinary responsibility as unbearable emptiness.

The answer is not moral panic about technology. It is deliberate mastery over it. Tools should extend human agency, not dissolve it.

Resentment is easier than responsibility

Responsibility is difficult because it requires a person to identify what he can change and begin there. Resentment is attractive because it makes moral superiority available without action.

The resentful person may correctly identify injustice. But he turns that insight into an identity. He needs the problem to remain unsolved because the problem explains his failure, organizes his anger and protects him from self-examination.

This is why resentment can survive even after circumstances improve. It is no longer merely a reaction to injury; it has become a shelter from responsibility.

A mature political culture must be able to name injustice without teaching helplessness. It must tell people the truth about constraints while also asking what can be built despite them.

Eritreans have legitimate grievances—inside the country, across the diaspora and in relation to the wider region. But grievance cannot become the organizing principle of national identity. A people defined mainly by what was done to them will struggle to decide what they must now do.

Memory should produce wisdom and vigilance, not permanent childhood.

Hardship must lead somewhere

Eritrean history gives sacrifice enormous moral weight. That is understandable. Independence was not granted cheaply, and national survival has repeatedly demanded endurance.

But sacrifice must be connected to construction. Otherwise, hardship becomes a ritual rather than an investment.

The purpose of endurance is not to prove that people can suffer indefinitely. It is to preserve the possibility of building something worthy of the suffering already carried.

That means each generation must translate inherited sacrifice into new forms of responsibility: reliable institutions, productive enterprises, better education, stronger families, technical mastery and public honesty.

The younger generation should not be told merely to suffer because others suffered. It should be told what the sacrifice is for, what must be built and how competence can turn endurance into progress.

Meaningless pain creates bitterness. Purposeful difficulty can create strength.

Parents must prepare children for reality

Parents understandably want to shield their children from pain. But the deepest duty of a parent is not to ensure that a child never struggles. It is to ensure that struggle does not destroy him when protection is no longer possible.

Children need age-appropriate responsibilities before adulthood arrives all at once. They should contribute to the household, experience consequences, solve problems, care for others and learn that love does not remove every demand.

Praise should be tied not only to talent but to honesty, courage, patience and completed work. A child repeatedly told that he is exceptional may become terrified of situations that could prove otherwise. A child taught that ability grows through effort can enter difficulty without interpreting it as humiliation.

The goal is not harshness. It is strength joined to security: “You are loved, and because you are loved, we will not cooperate with the habits that make you weak.”

Institutions must reward adulthood

Lectures about responsibility mean little when institutions reward the opposite.

If promotion depends on connections rather than competence, discipline becomes irrational. If honest criticism is punished while flattering failure is rewarded, courage becomes costly and silence becomes intelligent. If diligent people carry the work of the negligent without recognition, resentment spreads among the responsible.

A culture of adulthood therefore requires institutional fairness. Expectations must be clear. Performance must matter. Authority must answer for outcomes. People must be allowed to learn from mistakes, but repeated negligence cannot be endlessly disguised as compassion.

Responsibility must flow upward as well as downward. Leaders who demand sacrifice while refusing accountability destroy the moral language they use. Standards gain legitimacy only when those with greater power carry greater responsibility.

What a stronger culture would teach

A stronger Eritrean culture of adulthood would teach several truths without apology:

  • Your feelings matter, but they are not always instructions.
  • Your circumstances shape you, but they do not remove every choice.
  • Rights protect human dignity; responsibilities make shared life possible.
  • Asking for help is not weakness; refusing to grow after receiving help is.
  • Failure is not final, but it must teach something.
  • Discipline is not humiliation when it serves mastery and a worthy purpose.
  • Criticism should improve what we belong to, not become an excuse to belong to nothing.
  • Strength without compassion becomes cruelty; compassion without standards becomes decay.

These ideas are not imported ideology. They are practical requirements for any people that wants families, institutions and a nation capable of enduring pressure.

The alternative to comfort is not misery

The choice is not between a comfortable society and a suffering society. The real choice is between comfort that supports human development and comfort that replaces it.

Good roads reduce needless hardship so people can work more effectively. Reliable electricity frees time and expands opportunity. Better healthcare prevents suffering that teaches nothing. Technology can give citizens more capacity and control.

These improvements are worthy precisely because they allow people to direct their energy toward higher responsibilities.

The problem begins when comfort stops being a foundation and becomes the purpose of life. A person who lives only to avoid difficulty becomes increasingly frightened of reality, because reality eventually demands loss, restraint, patience and courage from everyone.

A nation of adults

Eritrea does not need a generation trained merely to endure orders, nor one trained to reject every obligation as oppression. It needs adults: people who can carry freedom without turning it into chaos and carry discipline without surrendering conscience.

Such people are difficult to manipulate because they do not need constant rescue. They can cooperate without becoming passive, criticize without becoming nihilistic and sacrifice without worshipping suffering.

A nation becomes stronger when more people can be trusted to act well without surveillance, finish work without applause and remain responsible when blame would be easier.

The highest goal of a society should not be to make every citizen comfortable. It should be to make meaningful life possible—and to prepare citizens strong enough to live it.

The disappearance of hardship does not create adulthood. The willing acceptance of worthy responsibility does.