Young Friends:
FGConnections Winter 2006

Being a Friend

By Aliyah Meena Shanti

Aliyah Meen Shanti. Photograph by Barbara Hirshkowitz.

Since I turned 18 last October, I have been pondering what it means to be a young Friend. I have only recently allowed myself to be identified as such, as for most of my childhood and teenage years I preferred to be known as simply “a Friend,” with no qualifications. I find it funny that now that I have finally reached the age of legal adulthood I no longer hear “young” as vaguely offensive. I spent my early teens struggling with youth programs, both inside the Religious Society of Friends and outside of it, which I all too often found controlling and condescending. I always disliked having issues or subjects simplified for me, and more than anything I hated the expectation that I might someday be a worthwhile person, but as of then I was merely in a state of waiting (when people used to ask me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” my most common reply was, “Taller!” a wish that, unfortunately, was not fulfilled). Mostly I spent time with people over ten years older than I, which I did not often regret, as I could relate to them much more easily than people of my own age.

It is only very recently, in the past few years, that I have come to realize that there are other people of my own age who see the world the same way I do, and that many of them had some of the same problems as I did. Some of these people are Friends and some are not, but meeting them came as a revelation to me. Here were people only a few years older than I who, having lived through the same times as I have, wanted to face and consider the many questions of these times without simplification or trivialization. As I grow and experience new things, my opinions and beliefs shift, and my curiosity to know the lives and beliefs and ministries of other people grows ever stronger, as does my desire to use my own voice to tell my own stories and other stories that I feel led to share.

I have been committed to the Religious Society of Friends for most of my life, and I love to find people of any age who share this commitment. In the future, I hope to see more “young” Friends actively participating in their meetings (although I do not worry about “drawing them in;” if they are meant to come to a meeting, they will come) and consciously living in and helping the world (living here is not optional, so we have to make the best of it). I hope that younger people will be able to lose their fear of their elders and that older people lose their nervousness around and need to control their youngers, so that we can talk freely, and trade new ideas and old traditions and all sorts of stories, because these are the foundation of any community.

Aliyah Shanti represents Olympia Monthly Meeting (WA), one of the nine monthly meetings directly affiliated with Friends General Conference. She recently joined the newly formed Youth Ministries Committee. She is currently attending Smith College.

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