Adolescence, Meaning, & Purpose
I attempt to tie a few threads together in this posting as succinctly as possible. Each thread holds enough weight to warrant its own separate book. To begin, take a moment to reflect on these questions. What do they bring up for you about your relationships, your lived life, and your unlived life?
What gets me up in the morning? What is of value that I must show up for?
Do I have a sense of purpose in my life?
Where do I belong and how do I contribute to the greater good?
Can I make meaning from the things that happen to me and in the world around me?
Do I have what I need to navigate hard things, to navigate suffering?
Who is there for me? And, more importantly, whom am I there for?
Do I live a life of integrity or am I out of integrity with my life?
Finally, do I, as a person who is in service to adolescents, dialogue with teens about these questions? What stories do I share about life, meaning, and wisdom?
There is no doubt that our teens are having a hard time. Recent news and research show that there are record numbers of teens with depression and anxiety. Ask any therapist who works with teens and you’ll hear story after story of kids who struggle to get out of bed, plod through their days, and some who just want to give up — and do. There are many speculative and some supported reasons for this: the COVID-19 pandemic; social media; climate crisis; cyberbullying; diagnostic inflation in Western English-speaking countries, that is, the overuse of diagnostic language; and specifically in the USA, the shift in public education from nurturing civic-minded lifelong learners to producing students who can pass standardized tests. The list goes on.
I think that all of the above are true. But I believe there is far more to this global youth mental health crisis. I propose that underlying all of these issues are a crisis of meaning and a question of purpose. Adolescents have a vital role to play in the unfolding events in their world. They have always been primed to move the needle. It is the archetypal nature of the youth to rebel, idealize, and demand change, sometimes simply for the sake of change and often to seek a way through to something new and necessary.
Lacey and Pathos
Lacey was a student at the alternative high school where I taught. On this particular day, while studying for her GED, Lacey came across a passage from Stephen Crane’s story The Open Boat as part of her reading lesson on “Identifying Theme.” In this passage, the main character confronts his mortality and contemplates his place in the universe.
“When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: “Yes, but I love myself.”
A high cold star on a winter’s night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.”
I wrote about this particular day in my journal:
“It seems fitting that this is the passage that we come across, that we discuss. I ask Lacey, “Have you ever stood under the stars at night, looked up, and realized how very, very inconsequential we are? It is both very humbling and very reassuring.” She does not know this feeling. She shakes her head. No, she has never stood underneath the stars and pondered who and how she is in the universe. But it all seems so fitting. Pathos.
I drive home through traffic after the long day of sitting with students who are going back home or to no home, to lives that I sometimes can’t fathom. I can feel the tears coming. They are like the waters pushing at the walls of the dike.
We are like parallel universes. We each live our lives within these universes we create and inhabit. And the universes bump up against each other, Big Bangs happening all over the place. Clashing, screeching, explosions, ripping apart, light, fire, fierce energies released. Do any of us have a clue?
And now, night. Making its way to dawn. Fatigue. Exhaustion. Pathos and weariness, two of Lacey’s new vocabulary words. Deep, bone-deep weariness. When did it begin? Knowing there is no end. Not really. What does it matter? Indeed. What does it matter?”
This encounter has long stood out in my mind as one of meaning-making, of exploring essential questions with my student about her place in the universe. We unpacked the word pathos and came to understand that it is often a place of poignant emotion that connects us to the rest of humanity. How small we all are under the stars. What struck me most about this conversation was that the concept of questioning one’s purpose in life and place on planet Earth had never entered Lacey’s mind.
Roy Baumeister in his well-received 1991 book Meanings of Life, writes, “Desperate people do not ponder the meaning of life. When survival is at stake, when the events of each day or each hour carry a sense of urgency, life’s meaning is irrelevant.” Lacey was intensely involved in street life and moving steadily into prostitution. Survival was certainly at stake. Baumeister’s premise makes sense.
However, for some desperation and survival are the impetuses for seeking meaning.
Necessary infrastructures for meaning-making
My own adolescence was one of chaos, steeped in loss and necessary parentification, peppered with neglect, emotional and sexual abuse. However, while I suffered, I never doubted that I was here for a reason, and I consistently explored questions of meaning and purpose.
I suspect that there were people and places in my life that invited the reflections that many of our kids do not have now. I had a foundation in poetry, Bible stories, fairy tales, and myths. I was familiar with ritual from going church and the daily rituals in my family that I carried with me into adulthood. I had access to the school and public libraries and was encouraged to read any- and everything. I was given basic art supplies at an early age and allowed to create. My 6th grade English teacher, when she discovered that my best friend and I had written a play, let us produce the play and arranged to have it performed for the entire school. My father posted one of my first poems on the bulletin board at his office. My 8th-grade English teacher taught us how to journal, and she conversed with me within the pages of that journal, letting me know that I was seen. My preacher told me that he read Lord of the Rings every few years and recommended that I do the same. The shift manager at my first job—as a soda jerk at the lunch counter at the local drugstore—shared all kinds of stories about her life and family, intimate glimpses of other lives lived.
In my conversations with teenagers today, I find that few if any have ever had an adult talk about any of the questions I posed above. Most of their interactions are transactional and directive. Adolescents need so much more. They suffer terribly for the lack of it.
The adults in my life were mentors, teachers, and guides. They validated and welcomed me. My presence mattered to them. They weren’t afraid to use adult language, talk about the hard things, ask about my dreams, not just my future goals. The adults in my life showed up. Everywhere. They were the infrastructure I needed to make meaning of the shitshow that was my adolescence. They believed in me and because of them, I found a Ground of Being within me that has not failed.
Photo by: Cultura Creative