[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!]
Smart teens are in grave danger of succumbing to a particular kind of sadness. It is a sadness that arises out of a too-keen understanding that human beings are merely excited matter, not put here for any purpose but simply arriving through nameable natural events that have stuck them on this planet for a certain amount of time, after which they will return to being blank stardust.
This truth about the facts of existence, that the universe has no purpose for us, no love for us, and no interest in us, translates in the soul of a smart, sensitive, idealistic teen into a despairing “Is this really all there is?” and a deep and abiding “Why bother?” Why run some rat race if at the end of that rat race is not cheese but death? Why write poetry to be read by three people who themselves will shortly cease to exist? Why bother to try to feed starving people when everyone is just coming and going? Why …
Billions of people have philosophical, religious and superstitious ways of warding off the truth about our impending complete non-existence. A smart teen, hoping against hope that she too may find something to embrace that takes the sting out of reality, may well dabble here and there, diving headlong into a month of Zen or a year of Kabbalah. But you will likely still have to color her blue. Even as she engages in wishful thinking about a loving universe or divine mysteries, her keen brain is saying, “Nope.”
How can she not be really and deeply dystopian? Of course, she will have her dreams, desires, ambitions, enthusiasms, pleasures, and all the rest. She can see herself writing novels, she can nurture that hope and bask in the light of that desire, and be existentially sad at the same time. Indeed, what smart adult isn’t both at once, working at something, maybe with enthusiasm, and sad at the same time? Isn’t that the lot of, first, a smart teen, and then a smart adult?
There is an unremarkable, not-quite-reassuring, not-quite-satisfying, but nevertheless pretty stalwart answer to this existential angst: to live. You take your time on earth as your time on earth, you don the mantle of meaning-maker and stand behind whatever you deem is important to stand behind, you name, identify, and self-select your life purposes, and you live, maybe still with some vestigial sadness, but maybe actually contentedly enough. That is the answer: but it is unlikely available to a smart teen buried in “Why bother?” She may not come upon that answer for another thirty years. That is a very long time to be sad.
For parents
Over these many years, you may have quietly arrived at your own way of understanding the facts of existence, made your peace with life and with mortality, and have achieved a kind of wisdom on those poignant scores. But can you remember what it was like being seventeen? That may not be possible. It may not be possible to perfectly remember that painful angst and sadness. But rest assured that you, too, had to live through seeing through the universe and staring at the void. That is where your teenager is staring today, at least for portions of her day.
Rather than trying to sell her on the easy comforts of make believe, you can smile and stare with her and exclaim, “What a view!” Maybe she will shake her head; maybe she will laugh; maybe she will storm out of the room. But she will still have received the message you sent, that you, even after everything you have gone through, are giving life a thumb’s up, not because it somehow deserves it, not because it somehow demands it, but because that thumbs-up gesture matches how you have decided to live.
She may not fully understand your smile, your gesture, or your attitude, but she will have gotten an important message between the lines: that a person can make it to your ripe age and still wear something like a smile. And if her sadness deepens, as it may, stop everything and have a walk and a talk, not about the pearly gates but about getting through this time of angst. What does she need? What can you do? Where might she turn? Be real and be a comfort. The void is very cold and no one is properly dressed for it.
For teens
There is a natural leap that you almost can’t help but make from “the universe is pointless” to “What’s the point?” But while that it is a natural leap, it is neither an inevitable leap or the right leap. The better leap to make is to leap right over nihilism and despair and land in the following place: “While the universe is pointless, I can still make quite a good life for myself. And maybe for some others, too.”
This landing place is not a denial of reality. It is itself completely real. It is you saying, “I get it, I’m not fooled by gimmicks like Heaven and reincarnation and past lives and the stars aligning, I’m not going to throw my brain in the garbage just for the sake of some unearned comfort, but rather I am going to earn some real comfort by looking reality in the eye, by not blinking, and by spending my time content to live creatively, ethically, purposefully, and passionately, which will be my version of ‘I matter.’”
That is the place to land. You do not gloss over the facts of existence but you also do not mourn them. Instead you smile—yes, a little ironically and sardonically—and make an amazing announcement, that you get it and that you nevertheless intend to live. When all is said and done, existential sadness is a kind of petulance. It is you folding your arms and saying, “Damn you, universe, how dare you be so nothing!” Let me send you a wish: for less petulance and for all the courage required to create a life.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!]
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
All teenagers have bnoshastaya depression. And among the smartest teenagers as well. But the good news is that it passes quickly.