Spirituality and Its Discontents
What is the relationship between spirituality and youthful “existential angst” – and other forms of depression and despair?
Schooled in Forebodings
Two
perfectly
identical
new school buildings
with very well-mowed lawns;
nothing there that doesn’t pay
most humble respects
to conveniences of feet…
They’ve really rolled out the green carpet!
Across the street
a swamp
has its own mist
assorted primordial aromas
innumerable cattails
unidentifiable pandemonium of stem and leaf
and at the fringes near the sidewalk
goldenrod and yarrow.
Quite a display
really
a natural riot
like the scenery on that wonderful old show
The Wild Kingdom;
and I love the mysterious tree
rising from the center with no leaves
(maybe it is dead).
Quite a jungle
really
but where are the dinosaurs
and the saber-toothed tigers?
How about an antelope?
I would settle for a skunk…
How about some nice sidewalk graffiti then?
It says
THIS WAY TO HELL
(indicating only these polite nearby schools).
If only he knew
that no one believes
adolescents’ prophesies
knowing their hormones run thick and green
that they exaggerate
like jungles.
Paul Martin
Posted by Paul at 8:23 PM Permalink
10 Comments:
Depression is very hard to deal with. It can make any kind of spiritual practice impossible. It's the Dark Night with no morning ever coming. I think anti-depressants are one of God's many gifts to us.
I also think that people who suffer depression can develop empathy in ways that the unfailingly optimistic don't. Optimism can be so flippantly used at the wrong time. Also, people with depression can't hide from their shadow sides. There are a lot of people invested in never experiencing that.
It could be me again but I sense sarcasm and perhaps the sense of waste.
I do not remember too much of my adolescene. I was too busy knowing.. who, what, where, and when; my homemade survival technique. Maybe because I have little memory I am having a hard time relating. Sometimes it saddens me that I feel like I am always watching through anothers eyes.
Paul, you are an inspiration and certainly make me want to become a better writer. I read your different articles or prose and I can't help but wonder if people really get how deep you seem to be. But fear not, I am quite thankful that you are. You make me think, and that IS a good thing.
RAFFI: The media's been exerting a progressively downward pull all right. I used to be amazed, staying at my cousin's for several months, who had all these, I don't know, 150 channnels, that it was so hard to find anything I wanted to watch. (OK, except the history channel...)
BAD ALICE: Yes, I think it must be something that happens to a lot of people - adolescense as a time of questioning. I suppose it happens at different levels and intensities - from being more of a pass time, as you mention, to involving real depression.
That's a good point. For some, depression is something that's a chronic struggle. For others, it can presage real transformation. I wonder what accounts for the difference?
Good point. Probably nothing takes the superficiality out of hope and optimism like being depressed first!
INSIDE/OUTSIDE: I appreciate the compliment. And you're absolutely on target about sensing something different here from other things I've posted, including the irony and sense of waste.
I wrote it when I'd gotten past my own youthful despair - but at the time I wrote it, in my mid twenties, I'd been out of it only two or three years, so it was still fresh and memorable. I was walking on the road leading to the high school I'd attended and on the sidewalk there was graffiti - "THIS WAY TO HELL." It was easy for me to identify with the alienation of whoever'd written it and that's what produced the poem.
I am leaving the high school teaching experience for many reasons, but you touch upon one. Parents are not giving the tools their children need to create their own pieces of heaven wherever they are. My high school experience was as close to Eden as it gets. Instead, teenagers today are coming in with negative attitudes and a lack of integrity. Not all, I must say that. I have some angels that I love. But my job has become hell because I am burnt out from having to be the support system for when my student gets pregnant, my student has to go to rehab, my student gets thrown out of the house, or my student is cutting him/herself. I think that having faith would help, but I don't know if religion is the answer to all of their troubles even though it is the lack of morals that their parents often have that seems to affect them so adversely. Sorry for rambling...my thoughts are scrambled and I have no real answer.
Wonder what you'll do next? I worked at the elementary level. I have to say my experience overall, at that level, was highly positive - and I was a counselor, so to paraphrase our fearless leader, I was dealing with "the worst of the worst!" I do have to say though, that some of the family situations I was seeing were becoming more and more extreme over time and this was reflected in an increasing frequency of severe behavior problems. (But these were still not that common in the districts I worked in.)
As far as faith helping, I tend to see faith as one element involved in personal growth and spiritual development and don't necessarily equate faith with belief.
Developing positively as a person who is less and less centered on the self and more on the larger world - to me, that's what counts. And the weight of many things in our culture tugs young people in just the opposite direction.
ENEMY OF THE R: Generally speaking it seems to me that sounds right - that the typical teenager doesn't have spiritual matters high on their list of concerns. But for those that do it can be an intense period.
Keshi.
One of my own foibles is a penchant for words like "foibles" or "penchant." I did too much reading when I was really young and the vocab stuck. So I have a lot of words that I hardly ever get to use, and if I try, half the time I pronounce them wrong because I only saw them in print and never heard them spoken before.
For about ten years I loved Anna KareNEENa until one day someone politely informed me it's "KarENina..."
So little time, so many foibles...
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