Friday, August 18, 2006

Why are (us) Teenagers Stressed? (#29)

Some of the main stresses within people arise out of simple human nature. The desire to be natural and free, the ability to express yourself and just be yourself, conflicts with everyone else’s thoughts and control.

Often, we try and express ourselves or try something new and we often are judged and/or yelled at, or condemned from doing that new thing by our parents, teachers, friends, hierarchs in our world.

What we do, think, and say is judged from someone else’s perception (your parents or whatever) and then, whatever they think of our acts (positively or negatively), they will either praise or punish us for whatever they think of our actions, if they were "good" or "bad".

Indirectly, our actions are almost pre-determined by our upper-hierarchs, parents teachers, friends; if we do not have the same mind set as they want us to, then we are "bad". We all need to BREAK this glass, this mindset, and start to be more open-minded people, our actions should be determined by ourselves.

The amount of pressure, the amount of stress we receive from our parents, is the highest because "we" (we in general) often feel pressure to have our parents like us and agree with us, so naturally, since they have the power, we have to conform with them, that is, if we want them to like us, if they don’t like our actions.

Also, in certain families the parents often smother and control their kids, to set them in the "right" direction. They think that by telling them what is right, they will do, and often that is the case. Parents think that they are doing a good job parenting if their kid is getting straight A's, or has their room and house cleaned, or if their kid is going to Harvard (I never heard, he’s going to Harper?!!, that’s awesome) or is a astrophysicist, or does the right thing. What they don’t realize is that, that doesn’t mean it makes us happy; sure we feel some sort of delight in making our parents think we're the best thing in the world to them and since they keep praising us for doing these things, why not just keep doing them?

Blind conformity...sad and tasteless...leaves you with an empty void feeling, that you cant seem to get rid of....

I often hear people talking about how someone is so smart, they get straight A's; oh, gee that’s a load of crap. Just because someone gets good grades never makes someone intelligent, it has the POTENTIAL to, but it doesn’t mean their intelligent; first off the word intelligent is highly subjective, second people judge others way too much based off grades.

Basing judgments of intelligence off of grades from school, only makes you a judge of a situation and a persons mindset. Your judging your personal bias and placing it into that situation and comparing your mindset to theirs, and if theirs doesn’t work out, then their not good enough. And when I say this I’m talking about schools, colleges, teachers, parents, you hierarchs...you guys are the problem.

What's amazing is when I hear people debating about intelligence and they use straight A's and school grades, as a showing of intelligence, I immediately think of how us teenagers (Even I see it, and you ALL know what I’m talking about, even I’ve done it, just to keep a grade), give each other last nights homework because you couldn’t do it, because you were doing something else, or were too lazy, or like for example this summer reading, most people don’t even read it, they get the overall story from someone else, or skim the book, or use spark notes and use the important stuff and then answer the questions in the one hour they have of talking about the book, and then they GET the credit....

Lots of kids don’t really even pay attention in class, we sort of just pay attention to the major details and learn what we have to know, we don’t expand, we don’t imagine with what we’ve learned, we don’t think we could use that information. We take what’s needed for the test and study what’s needed for that test, even the teachers give us papers saying what’s going to be on the test (sometimes, or they say these could just be things that COULD be on the test as well as what will).

We have so much to learn in such a short period of time and memorize it and then test about it, CONSTANTLY, test, test, test. Somehow the U.S. got into this mindset that tests prove everything and then the world fell with the conformity of the U.S.

You want to know why us teenagers are stressed? We're put under the pressure, the pressure to do what EVERYONE ELSE wants, and never do what we want, they say do what you want, but does anyone really mean it? Does anyone really know what that means, or how to achieve it?

When you can't express yourself, open, honestly, and freely, you will never feel that sense of delight, that sense of freedom. If you don’t do things for YOU, if you only do things because people or laws tell you: You can't do what you want to do, so you do something else instead because its wrong(and I’m not talking about killing or breaking into homes), then you have just fell to blind conformity.

Its not just laws either, its morality, morality is almost like a psychological block insisting you do what’s right, from what everyone thinks is right. Not many people accept that there is no such things as right and wrong or question it, because if they accept that or question it, then many of their family, friends, and people they care for might fade away because they could think of you as a "bad" person for not accepting or doing the "right" thing.

Let GO! Accept the truths of the world if you want, but don’t focus so entirely of others, some people will say"well that’s being selfish", but those people are often more depressed inside then everyone else and most confused as well.

We're stressed because we want the truth, we want to be free, we just want to be ourselves.

We want the truth to make sense of it all, and add direction and meaning, to figure out what to do next, based off the truth.

We want to be free, by expressing ourselves, and thus doing what we want, to make ourselves feel better, no matter if that’s opposed by your parents, laws, hierarchs, whatever; Do what YOU want, but be aware of the consequences of what you do, when you do them.

We're stressed because were pressured to conform, to not question, to not do the "wrong" thing according to someone else’s perception, by someone or a group of people have said THIS is "wrong" and your "bad" if you do it. Once we have the freedom to object and ask questions and do the thing we like, were labeled as weird or anarchist, or terrorist, or someone "bad" according to the rest of the conformists. We are then outcasted from society (a nonconformist) and then our sense of this great loving world breaks, which then you are confronted with two options at this point.

1.Either just conform and accept what they are saying as true and be the conformist as the rest
or
2.Believe what you want, but you will be outcasted and labeled as different.

Most people don’t want to have to go through the second choice because it looks hard and appears more stressful at the initial point of becoming yourself and doing what you want because YOU want to, not because anyone else thinks so(a nonconformist). Most people want the easier and less stressful way so they just accept and try and be what everyone else wants them to be. They thus lose a part of themselves, and can never truly be who they want and have that freeness flowing through your veins. Being free is a mindset, not just a physical standpoint.

To not be stressed, is not complicated....You must first understand what causes stress, learn how stress is being afflicted onto you, and then question and learn how to deal with it. However, its usually a much more complicated process than I just said and often can take years of grueling pain and questioning to understand this; As I have experienced myself...

Self-express is true freedom......

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)

Labels:

1 Comments:

Blogger Hershal said...

hmmm......when u say that we don't pay attention to what is being taught in the class and we don't think about the thing's practical value.........i think you know what you are doing and what you should be doing.

The best part of being a philosopher is that you don't have to depend upon someone else to show u the right way.

Well, I have entirely changed the design of my blog.....i think, it looks better now!

Have a look, there are a few new poems too.

August 27, 2006  

Post a Comment

<< Home