This article is part of a column that addresses Generation Z’s mental health crisis by calling attention to societal attitudes that may cause us to lose sight of meaning.
As we spend our days on our small, peaceful campus here at Wheaton, we have the blessing and privilege of participating in the journey of higher education. And yet, the world suffers around us.
Israelis and Palestinians endure violence that has lasted for generations. Refugee crises deteriorate countries in Africa and the Middle East; governments in many parts of the world violently oppress their citizens. Meanwhile, America has its own innumerable legal and social problems, constantly fighting to reconcile the nation’s principles and values with its past and current failures.
It can be surreal to think of such immense suffering while living at Wheaton. But as I go about my life, it seems obvious that we do not escape suffering here either. Everyone faces their own battles. Maybe a loved one is in poor health or passing away, or the cost of school living is a strenuous financial burden. From strained relationships with family to alienation and struggling to maintain fulfilling friendships, to keeping up with schoolwork and dealing with poor mental health; through all this, we try to figure out who we are and how we belong in our community.
Sometimes these struggles are unspoken. The painful complexities of the lives of the people around us remain hidden. The suffering we bear witness to most often is our own and that of the people immediately closest to us.
But increasingly, people wear their pain on their sleeve. Casual jokes and comments about family trauma are commonplace. Students find ways to relate class topics to the struggles of their own lives, sharing profoundly painful personal experiences as part of class participation.
This likely stems from a cultural shift in attitude towards mental health, to “normalize” our struggles and find connection and healing through sharing it with others. It’s unclear whether this public “normalization” does the good it’s supposed to for the person sharing or the people around them. Regardless, we find ourselves in close proximity to the suffering of friends and strangers alike. Psychologist and public figure Jordan Peterson often talks about human psychology as it relates to purpose and meaning. In one of his lectures, he discusses how we process our negative emotions:
“If you have a memory that’s more than about 18 months old, and when the memory comes to mind it still produces negative emotions, it means that you haven’t fully delved into or understood all the significance of the events that are encapsulated in that emotion for reconstructing the aims of your life.”
“So, something bad happened to you and it froze you. It turned you into a prey animal and produced a powerful emotional response, and the emotional response is to freeze and to avoid and to not go there again.”
I feel like I witness and more than I’d like to admit, partake
in this frozen state of being. Sometimes it’s easier to diminish the significance of our personal inadequacies than to fully understand the toll they take on us and the people around us.
Additionally, we often feel justified in putting aside our basic incompetence in handling our own problems by redirecting ourselves toward solving larger social problems. Constantly, we are called to take action against societal injustice. We are told we need to solve tremendous social issues from the top down. The government structure is unjust, and we need to fix it. We need to decide which policies will help disadvantaged or destitute people, and make decisive political statements that demonstrate we are “on the right side.”
Simultaneously, most of us barely have a grasp on basic economics and the structure of our government. Most of us have barely lived long enough
to see the effects of government policies passed before we were born, but think we know the policies we ought to pass today. Most of us haven’t sorted out our family lives, we don’t treat the people in our day-to-day lives with enough compassion and respect. Most of us are quick to judge harshly and jump to conclusions.
So why do we think we know what’s best for our country, or even the world when we don’t know what’s best for ourselves? Why do we think we can answer the call to action against widespread poverty, injustice, and inequality when we have yet to answer the call to action in our personal lives?
The call to social justice will be present throughout our lives. But so will the call to fight our battles against anxiety, depression, fear, and selfishness; the call to strive for bravery and perseverance in our day-to-day problems; the call to treat ourselves with respect and love others better.
In answering the call to action in our personal lives each day, perhaps we could find the meaning in those battles and successes that we have abandoned as we pretend to fight the larger political and social battles that we barely understand; and in doing so, better prepare ourselves to face those challenges competently when called.