Give us back some heavy duty maturity rituals

When I manage to observe my teenagers with empathy, I can see that they have a tough time trying to figure out their position in this world and their identity. Perhaps a tougher time than my generation had.

This new generations, at least in the modern Western societies, have been bombed with information and options to a much higher degree that any generation before. Even adults are having a hard time figuring out how to live their lives surrounded with hundreds of TV channels, thousands of commercials creating and shaping their needs, millions of consumer goods dragging credit cards out of their wallets, all the internet goodies giving them an illusion that there’s absolutely no need to go away from their computers at all… It is so understandable that adolescents fall prey to all these temptations in their teenage years of confusion, fragility and many searches.

When in my teenage years, I used to spend a couple of hours each day roaming with my dog around forests and another couple of hours per day listening to music in darkness just to sort out my daily confusions, thoughts, existential dilemmas and emotions. I can imagine that these modern teenagers have the same dilemmas blurring their beings on the one hand, and many more distractions that keep them from actually facing and digging through them, on the other.

And there’s yet another thing that keeps my mind busy lately, thinking that we parents could help and support them a bit more than what we actually do. I read that some anthropologists claim that puberty is an invention of modern times and that ages back teenagers did not face the same periods of confusion between the childhood and the adulthood as they do now. The crucial point seems to have been the rituals of maturity.

Becoming a fully responsible adult seems to had been a more clear-cut achievement, with people knowing just how long they were children and from which point on the childhood was gone. In some cultures they have sent them to monasteries for a year or so, to go to savannah to kill a lion, or just let them have their 12^th or 14^th or whichever birthday; and from that moment on they were to kiss their childhoods goodbye, leave their warm families, go into the world, build their own house, get their own goats and cows and field and lives; and be fully responsible for themselves.

Our modern kids do not have any of that; what they have is many years of lack of clarity, many years during which the liberties of a child are confused with the responsibilities of a grown-up person, where they want to enjoy the comfort of the family house, but not share the responsibilities of the household. And this long passage is not only killing for us parents, but also for the teenagers, adding tremendous weight to their already not easy search for identity, meaning and a way to live.

I can count myself as somebody who, though not with the best childhood possible, have been fortunate enough to affirm his adulthood and maturity with three initiations in one life. The first one was my suicide attempt at 16 – a clear and fully responsible choice to step out of the painful-but-safe known into the complete unknown. The second was to leave, again, the known and pre-set life and jump into the void of roaming, with no money and maps, in a heavy-duty hippy style, around Middle East and Africa for half a year. No mommy and daddy around to get me out of troubles, only me and the big, uncontrollable world. The third one was the 13 months of obligatory military service in the Yugoslav army – where my needs, wishes, thoughts, feelings, values… did not matter a thing. Yet there I was, finding my way through the day, one after another. Ok, I was not enjoying every bit of these passages, but they were actual thresholds and every single time I came out on the other side more firmly grounded in the reality of this life. And, despite all of that, it still took me another decade or so in order to start acting and living as a fully responsible and mature human being.

So, no matter how irritated sometimes I can get while observing my three teenagers dragging themselves around the house, whining over petty little things that happen to them during the day and resisting to take on even little discomfort or responsibilities, if I look with my heart I can see they are not having a nice time. Sometimes having no problems and facing no boundaries can make you numb and ignorant of everything. Which is painful.

So I am seriously considering creating certain maturity rituals, perhaps encouraging them to take a year off, go pick oranges in Australia or something to make money and afterwards backpack around the world a bit. Or go to a humanitarian mission for a few months somewhere on the other side of the planet. Or go work somewhere for a year and then see if studying is still such a boring and terrible idea. Or… Hm. Do you have any ideas for initiating teenagers, in a humane way, into the adulthood and reality of life?

Mamma Mia, here I cry again

Me and Marjeta went to see Mamma Mia! this evening and it was a bingo, pure joy for us. Ok, it is not the deepest movie that we have ever seen and neither does it have any sort of a mind blowing plot, but this was meant to be an emotional experience, not an intellectual one. And emotional it was!

One trigger of the emotions was the pure nostalgia that connects me with Abba. It was the first pop band in my life that I became a fan of, knew all the songs and sang them over and over again, sitting by the tape recorder. And, of course, I was deeply in love with Agnetha. Now, who wasn’t?

But the crucial thing for me was that the whole movie was about people coming out with the deeper self and deeper reality, and coming together on more fundamental levels. Yes, I guess it was the coming out and coming together that did it again. As it always does. And we cried and cried, ran out of handkerchiefs after half an hour already.

And it made me remember the sharing we had at the NVC training in July about the question why do we cry when we are happy, when we are touched. Why are we not just plain happy, like kids? They do not cry when they are happy, for the first few years of their lives at least.

So, the best explanation we came up with was that when we are touched, when we open up emotionally and get in touch with ourselves, with others and with life, when there is a sense of reunion, reconciliation, we feel two different emotions at the same time; on the one hand it is happiness, fulfilment, joy. But on the other hand we, at the very same moment, get connected with all the past pain that accumulated in us during the period of separateness. We re-experience the time when there was pain because of having no contact with ourselves, life or others. There seems to be some deep existential mourning and grieving going on.

This sounds so true to life, at least to me. For instance, whenever I watch the video I have posted a couple of weeks ago, I cry, every single time. It is always pure joy of coming out and coming together, yet there seems to be an awesome lot of mourning within me, mourning over all these billions of tons of separateness, barriers, distinctions and pain within us and between us.

Children, on the other hand, have not yet generated that many painful experiences and can still enjoy pure joy and happiness. May they enjoy it forever.

A vow observed

I am so excited about this new phase of my life. As I vowed in my post Live now, work later, I actually did cut down on my work about 30 % and, oh boy, is this life different now.

I mean, I feel great! I get enough rest and I am starting to enjoy life again. I can see the dawn again, notice weather, enjoy sunsets, hear birds, I am becoming a bit less antisocial again…, and most of all, I am not tired. As much.

Actually just now I am starting to realize how damn exhausted I was six months back: I was practically on the edge all the time, gasping for air and life energy, with – due to the constant and intensive interactions with groups while leading workshops after workshops, trainings after trainings – my emotional field being like a Swiss cheese. And me being happy when starting holidays like a school kid. And this is not OK for somebody who is actually doing what he likes to do.

It’s incredible how my perception of life has shifted just by getting some more rest. I am starting to feel whole again.

But it is as well true that I need to keep my eye on my inner wolfs that are howling some classic songs somewhere at the back of my mind. The top three being:

• I need to be of use all the time (I guess there’s a need to feel worthy and accepted underneath that).
• I must first do all my duties and responsibilities, and only after that I can rest (meaning that I will finally be able to rest just after my funeral.)
• Suffering is a more proper way to live than to simply enjoying life and taking it easy (the heritage of the beautiful socialist-catholic cultural discourse within which I was growing up)

Yet the truth is that, to my great relief, the voices of these inner wolves of mine are much weaker than they used to be.

So, my advice people: work less, enjoy more! But you already know that, it is just me being that thick-headed.

I guess now I can move to my next vow, the one I wrote on Robin’s blog: about spending more time in nature and less between walls.

No world out there

I find it very natural to just sit and observe people, at airports, in restaurants, cafes. Yet the other day I realized that I do not know what do I observe really: other people or myself. Let me explain.

When I am centred, at peace with myself and my life, all I see is beautiful, wonderful people, carrying wounds and pain in their hearts, being soft and fragile within, full of love… I see their sincere attempts to do good, to be fulfilled, to make sense of their lives. My heart melts in warmth, my eyes get filled with tears and I am all empathy.

On the other hand, when I am feeling nervous, under pressure, frustrated, in inner conflicts and stress, I do not see that scene at all. All I can see than is egotistic, pushy, aggressive, ugly and terrible people, being nasty to each other, torturing their children and spouses. And my mind goes cynical. No empathy. Nothing.

It is obvious that my perception is utterly shaped by the state of my emotional being.

So what am I seeing really?

Nothing out there.

All I can ever see are merely my projections, my own emotional colouring, my subconscious patterns, cultural discourse, mental patterns and expectations… I do never communicate and interact and live with such and such people, with individuals and their objective attributes. No, I live among people that I am creating inside my head, shaping them this way or that way, arbitrarily.

That’s why my wife is sometimes divine Goddess, and sometimes…, well, something rather different. It is me who keeps changing her, inside my head, not her. In other words, if I want to see you ugly, there’s nothing you can do about it. And in case I choose to see you beautiful, you are trapped again… The same applies for everything; I am the creator of the world I live in and I keep re-creating it moment by moment.

So, you and me, we do not live in the same world. Pretty scary, isn’t it?

Violence intolerance

I am feeling rather shaken, frustrated and sad right now. I have been working with a class of 13 years old kids in one primary school and I am in a state of shock because of the level of violence I am facing there.

It is not physical, but rather rational and emotional, so to say. It is at the level of kids wanting to hurt one another because they simply want to hurt one another. They want to cause pain in others and when they see the pain and the hurt in the eyes of their school mates, they feel victorious and they laugh. And they feel this is really all right, they like to have power over others, and they want to build up their strength, physical as well as social, in order to achieve that. They simply do not want to look for the nonviolent strategies of conflict resolution because they are completely happy with the violent ones. They like them.

I know, I know, I know that there are completely opposite feelings and needs underneath this violence, I am aware of that fully. But, oh boy is it difficult to see this connection when on the scene. And find empathy within me. I am used to work with people who are being violent but, if not immediately than at least some time after, feel sorry for that. Or at least feel they do not want to be violent but are “being forced to” by other people. Or fail to find other strategies, though they are searching for them. But in this case these kids keep stating that they actually like violent strategies and feel no need to move anywhere from this point.

I do not want to become violent myself, using my power of an adult over them to “make” them less violent and more respectful and all of that, because that would of course lead nowhere. And so I am persisting, trying to melt down the violence and connect with them on the deeper and more true level. Honestly believing it can be done.

However, my system is really in a state of shock and suffering in these situations. I just cannot tolerate violence. Was never able to. I was never able to punch a person in the face because I did not want to hurt them, even when I was a kid. I do get nervous when people are violent towards me, but I get extremely bewildered when I see people violently hurting each other. All of my beingness has been rejecting the world of violence for as long as I remember being alive. I cannot live with it. I do not want to live with it.

Seeing it all around breaks my heart, it really does.

A nice guy

Being 42 I am still struggling with climbing out of some deeply seeded roles I seem to be acting out in almost all my interactions and relationships – to a certain degree at least. One of the most stubborn ones is the role of being a nice guy.

I was, through my primary as well as my secondary socialization, literally trained into being a good boy and a nice guy, meaning having to bee obedient, good, respectful, never raise my voice, always be responsible, always meet expectations of other people… You know, making everybody happy. And while not being such a good student in schools I, much unfortunately, turned out to be an excellent one in this regards.

About twenty years or so ago I started to be aware of specific difficulties (like not being able to get angry with people, to confront others in conflicts, to express my needs and opinions when those were unpopular ones…) I had and begun to get the first idea about what was underneath. Yet several years needed to pass before I managed to realize the immense dimension and the depth of this sub-persona of mine. It was like a cage that has integrated into my own being completely and kept suppressing huge amounts of never felt, let alone expressed, emotions. Certainly felt like a mild version of the Incredible Hulk.

Nowadays I am still struggling with attempts to grow out of this cage. It is not nearly as present and strong as it used to be, however it still tries to impress others, control their interpretations of myself and gets rather irritated when other people, seemingly just out of the blue, choose to not like me. So I need to be pretty conscious and aware to succeed in allowing myself to NOT be nice all the time and, to manage to express not so nice things, to let others see me the way they want to and to let people not like me if this is how they want to proceed.

But there’s one part of this story that is particularly puzzling my mind. What would my life be like if I wasn’t that much burdened with the role of a nice guy in my past? Would I still choose to be a psychotherapist, trying to nicely help others and save everybody? Would I still turn out to be a coach, trainer, mediator, trying to make everyone happy and ease life of each person around me? Or would I just mind my own business and my own life and my own happiness? In other words; to what extend is my need to help other people coming from the true and genuine parts of my being and to what extend it is just a product and a strategy of the neurotic nice guy within me?

I guess I will never know. But it would be fun to be able to check out various possibilities and see what comes out, like in The Butterfly Effect movie.

The Responsibility of Parenting

A couple of days ago I came home from Norway where I was giving another Conflict resolution training to students at the Red Cross Nordic United World College. Working with eager kids from literally all over the world is such a breeze and immense inspiration for me after loads of workshops and trainings given in the business environment. With the absolutely serene nature around being a cream at the top.

On the other hand, it always brings up quite some memories and emotions from within me. Not only does it strike me that my kids are already of this college age (therefore I am not as young as I like thinking I am), during the training and working on questions of needs, free choice, inner conflicts, inner obstacles, lack of self confidence etc, students come in touch with some deeper realms of their beings. And when they come to see me in the breaks to share some intimate problems they have, seeking empathy and support, I am always touched by the fragility of us, human beings, on the one hand, and with the amount of burden they already carry around with them at their age, on the other.

From a certain point of view it is really sad to see how deeply they (and all of us, of course) were shaped by the countless influences from their social environment, starting with their parents, families, schooling system and the culture as whole. As Foucault would have said (I guess), the individual is so utterly manufactured within the discourse of the culture and social environment that we can hardly speak of anything like an individual at all.

From the day 0 our children are left at the mercy of all almost omnipotent adults around, bossing them around and pre-shaping them, willingly or unwillingly, in all sorts of directions. And this process continues on a daily basis, for years after years, forcing them to hyper produce strategies to emotionally survive.

Now, the scary part for me right now is the fact that I am shaping my kids as I write this – and have been doing it all along the way. Thousands of to me seemingly unimportant events and hundreds of those that even I can see as important have left piles of scars and wounds, without me even being aware of them. From their most early childhood my words and my silence, my actions and my non-actions, kept creating certain confusions, fears, pain and so directed their inner emotional life in certain directions. Yes, I also have given them love and support and respect and all of that, as much as I could and probably above average, however this does not change the amount of the painful impact I have caused. And does not provide me with much comfort.

Couple of months back when I realized the amount of love I have, completely ignorant of that, withheld from my kids, my heart almost fell apart. All those years have seemingly rushed by like a tornado and soon they will be leaving home, off into the world and into their independent lives, with all the luggage they will be taking away and having to struggle with for the rest of their lives.

Little did I know about the responsibility of parenting when, many years ago, the idea of having a child or two seemed like a very nice, easy and romantic one.