Are You One of Us?

Hi, I’d like to introduce myself. If you don’t know me, you likely know somebody like me.

I’m the young person who seems at least reasonably smart and hard working who can’t seem to fit in and get the hang of life. I’m sometimes congenial and other times stand-offish.

I’ve been accused of being unreasonable, unrealistic, naive, or foolish.

I’ve been accused of having a bad attitude, or not wanting to pay my dues, or not understanding how the world works.

I wander, seemingly without purpose. The benchmarks of my parents good pay, good benefits, job security, don’t impress me. I quit or get fired. I am often depressed.

People like me fall into drug use in seemingly larger numbers each year. People like me struggle with depression and seem to swing between apathy and passionate anger at the oddest times. People like me seem to have their lives permanently stalled or locked in neutral at the on ramp of adulthood.

What is to done about people like me?

I often like the outdoors, the sound of wind over the hill. I frequently like hiking and camping and often take martial arts or outdoor sports.

Psychologists and artists both are noticing that the frustration and directionless in security of adolescence is lasting longer and longer. Robert Bly wrote about it in “Iron John”, as did Michael Kimmel in “Guyland”. Adult women read teen fantasy such as “Twilight”- in which a teen girl slowly enters the world of the undead, forever sixteen. Popular television is rooted in the teenage quest for popularity- the reality television show. Immature adults populate movies in ever greater numbers.

But I do not think that most of us want to be here- trapped in this nowhere space between child and adult- despite what Hollywood might think. I think people like me remain here- trapped- because we see no viable exit.