Accelerated Adolescence

Let Me Tell You a Story

At four years old, a young boy opened his eyes for what felt like the first time. Quietly looking around him, he noticed that many larger people were engaging in purposeful activities in a determined manner. These people could read and write, do math, and create and understand humor. At first, he confused purpose for meaning and knowledge for wisdom. Comparing himself to these people who displayed such positive qualities, he came up short. His wide eyes seemed to reveal a world in which he was hopelessly inadequate and, failing to understand that human capacity is a function of time, was firmly rooted there.

He longed to engage in these activities and strove to obtain the acceptance of his superiors. And, yet, he felt as though he was being stymied at every turn by his inferior size and knowledge. Constantly rejected or unwanted for whatever undesirable trait he possessed, he found sympathy only from a few. His longing to engage and to understand fueled a passion that drove him to frustration and impertinance. Upon entering the formal education system he became quickly jaded when the school refused to teach him how to read until "next year." What was so inferior about being five instead of six, he could not grasp.

Soon, however, he understood that he was, by nature, dynamic and growth oriented. Knowledge was not copyrighted by the school. It seemed to him, even, that the school system barely had a grasp on basic information. Perhaps, he was precocious. Perhaps, he was blessed to have been reared in a family of high achievers. Perhaps, had someone simply explained to him that school was an institution designed to subjugate the young and truly interested, he would have readily agreed. However, no one offered this and he bought the notion that high performance in school would lead to his eventual liberation. Ironically, when he was finally released to join other high achievers, he soon became dismayed by the social politicking that was required in such a small group.

Nevertheless, despite the emphasis he placed on personal standards, his motivation to succeed was badly injured by this disillusionment. At twelve, he felt introspective and isolated from the other children. He had been raised to have different beliefs, different standards for performance, and fundamentally different values. Society, clearly, thought of him as strange, felt that his beliefs were bizarre and threatening, and spent no time hiding its hostility towards this divergence.

Feeling the outsider, his identity with his minority beliefs strengthened along with his rejection of the mainstream culture. His argument with society became the object of his adolescent frustration, as well as its source. His defiance became his standard as much as acceptance was that of most others. He craved rejection with the same hunger that forced him to seek it. A subconscious internal dialogue developed that drove him to both ends.

The first truly fatal event in his life silenced the call of obsequious anonymity, for a time. With the crunch of glass, along came an experience that, despite repeated attempts, was incommunicable. In his heart, fully, he stepped completely into the ice-cold waterfall. Previously, he had managed only to venture, wading, into the stream. Others would have seen this as detachment from the world, disociation, and perceived themselves in a state of opprobrium. Rather, the water was cool and refreshing; life and unity sprung from it and flooded his whole being with light and meaning. Yet, upon stepping out of the water, it was difficult to remember more than the vague feeling of submersion.

However, again, again, and again, he would hear its call, step forward and embrace the coolness, only to be unable to remain in its intensity. School had passed by and he was no longer constrained by a rigidly draconian system of oppression, heralded by so many imbeciles, attempting to revive their flaccid egos through the compressions of desperate association, as the source of contemporary wisdom and enlightenment. Thus, his feet carried him into an area of unknown. An unknown that would repeatedly drive him from the stream and then violently force him below its freezing surface.

When regaining the original path that the world had so repeatedly trodden his perspective had been, again, radically changed. The previous dialogue, debating servility to the norm and independence from cultural, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual oppression had ended. Instead, it had been replaced with a knowledge of the necessity to alter others' reality such that the world could prepare itself for the next great change it would be required to take. The question became one of how to balance the forces of inebriated servility and cultural insurrection and still live in a peaceful state.

Constantly, the question of how to achieve balance challenged him. Oddly, he still felt compelled to ignore the rigors of a new academic institution. What he discovered about his new environment from this new question was the seeming lack of balance or ability to shift to accomodate changing forces. Moreover, he was intrigued by others who insisted that they were right and others wrong. Frequently, he felt as though these people desired only to be heard but, because they simply repeated themselves ad nauseam, they appeared obstinate and overbearing. Though there was plenty of insight to be gleaned from the environment around them, they were unable to see it. Their constant reiteration created a communication of one-ways.

Then he realized that in his frustration with the world, he too, had developed a monotonous transmission that clouded his hearing. He felt that others perceived him only two dimensionally, shallow. He desired to be understood more deeply, as being still driven by his earliest drives. He wanted others to know that he still sought their acceptance and love. He wanted them to know that he cared deeply for them and found that, despite what they became, he was unable to lose interest in a strong relationship with them. His desire for community and love outgrew his childhood competetiveness and drive for acceptance as a function of merit. He now wanted acceptance for just being, a greater request than before.

It became necessary to curb his two dimensional projection of himself in order to gain deeper relationships. In order to be more honest with others, he needed to become more honest with himself. He began listening to the comments from others. And, though being unable to necessarily read the emotions and meaning for the person saying them, he could glean some meaning for himself out of these comments. Critiques did not go unheard.

Sometimes, however, negative attention still sufficed to fill the gap of feelings of emptiness and negligence. People with whom he hoped for a better, deeper relationship became adversarial, characterized by an unabiding lack of sympathy. Neither person ventured to break the emotional ice by asking the other what they truly felt. Each thought that they had encapsulated the other in the banality of a few simplistic statements and ideological epithets, both of which engendered the condescending invectiveness with which their conversations had become rife.

He then became intensely concerned with a new question; how could those who had such an intense affinity for one another display such a lack of emotional empathy for one another. In a way, the empathy of the disconnected is antithetical to the empathy of the connected. Apathy is not included in the empathich realm. Understanding how to arouse the frustrated core of passions of others, on the other hand, is. What makes the desire of two people to bridge a relational gap only serve to enlarge the rift?

So my friends, this ends my story to you tonight. This is not a story of conflict and resolution, it is a story of life, ongoing. It is simply a story of conflict. The story does not require any special quality in order to grasp its meaning nor does it ask the reader to provide an acceptable solution. It only asks that the reader be thoughtful for a moment and consider that, perhaps, most of the time we are true solipsists. It is only on brief occasion that we remember that others are as complex as we are.

Posted by Mendon at March 12, 2006 11:22 PM