As it happens, not long ago I had a conversation with someone fresh out of the wilderness of adolescence. That is if we are to consider the age of 20 as the upper limit for this time in a person’s life because some generous psychologists push this margin towards 25. But I fear that we are living in a period of regression of common sense, and this is pushing the adolescent boundary further and further toward senile dementia!
But the person in question, as we shall see from the statement she made, really did seem to be moving towards adulthood with consciously assumed intent. I say this because I had the following short dialogue with her:
Q: What do you think would be a necessary skill acquisition that every young person needs to make to transition successfully through the age range called adolescence and enter smoothly into independent adult life?
A: Every teenager needs to learn to take initiative!
A good answer I would say. That sounds good, doesn’t it?
We need to learn to take the initiative in the face of the problems that life puts before us. We need to overcome our dependence on the authorities in our lives. So that, through the initiatives we take as individual choices, we in turn become responsible authorities when it comes to the actions we take, but at the same time to be able to protect others in their development, giving them the necessary environment to exercise new initiatives.
Yes, adolescence is a time of assuming our own will, a time of individual empowerment in the face of life’s problems, and this is even at the cost of attracting disapproval from the authorities to which we belong. It is a time when you understand at the level of emotional intuition that your parents will die. They are not immortal and all-powerful like God, but you, if you dare to take on the gift of inner power, will eventually be able to take care of yourself and live beyond the protection of your parents. In this way, you come to realize that you have the power within you to cope, to succeed, and you don’t need to be dependent on them and their resources all your life. You make these discoveries while being protected by your parent’s money and resources, including their life experiences that guide you. So you don’t need to directly assume the brutality of surviving on your own, and you don’t need to suddenly become responsible, in an integral way, for the consequences of your individual decisions. But if you reject this necessary effort, you will condemn yourself to a life lived under the burden of constantly pleasing others. The tragedy of this is that will inevitably leave you incomplete in your development as a unique person. If you choose to remain immature in relation to your individual will and the initiatives that can flow from your uniqueness, the only option you will have left will be to constantly seek new ways to comfort yourself through pleasure. You will not be able to evade the continual temptation of pleasure because a sense of continual latent frustration will be your habitual inner state. This frustration will consume the vital core of your heart through the obedience and conformity you have assumed, frustration that will not allow you to have peace with yourself because what you have become is so much less than what you could have been.
So what is the Untold festival for the teenagers who pass through its doors? Is it a place of taking responsibility for one’s own growing up? Or is Untold a liminal space, a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, a kind of annual initiation event? Is the ecstasy experienced collectively a response to the need for emotional maturity?
I’m afraid not… And why do I say that?
Because sensory anesthesia is not needed to overcome man’s natural inertia to reach maturity. What we need is to cultivate receptivity to reality as it is, not to hide our unfulfillment behind a magical scenario that our childish desires crave to believe is real. Not by a cosmetic script that sells us the illusion that all is beautiful and rosy, that suffering does not exist, and that all things are possible. Such an approach is a recipe for cultivating socio-emotionally handicapped individuals, people unable to cope with the wilderness that reality incorporates. All that the permanent choice of ecstasy as a solution to life’s existential problems does is to cultivate our amnesia about the horizon of greatness that true maturity sets before us. The greatness that we gain when we explore the unknown areas of our life’s territory when we tame wildness and manage to take the initiative in the face of the challenges it brings. It’s as if one needs to train for an expedition that lies ahead. Without this specific training, he will surely die in the face of the expedition’s challenges. But because the training is tiring, he chooses to stay in bed and not exert himself. Eventually, his muscles will atrophy completely, he may even end up thinking he never knew how to walk, let alone conquer heights. Such an environment is nothing less than the launching pad for future citizens of the wonderful new world Aldous Huxley described so well.
It’s not sensory ecstasy that the future adults of tomorrow need, life is pretty exciting at their age anyway, after all, the neuronal synapses of teenagers are bursting with dopamine, at much higher levels than in adults. They need to cultivate the courage to assume their inner power. They need us to believe in them, to empower them, and to stand with them on their journey to greatness. To assist them by giving them space and freedom for real and practical initiative. The world of adults must not become known to them as the world of those who have access to more intense pleasures, that is not the real challenge of growing up. Immersing them in a herd of disoriented adults seeking meaning in a collective experience, one where their individuality dissolves into temporary ecstasy speaks very clearly to teenagers about running away from reality and by no means about coming to terms with it.
Teenagers need those who are older than them. Teenagers need us adults to practice embracing reality alongside them and to inspire them and awaken their enthusiasm to take the initiative in dealing with life’s problems. When problems are taken on trans-generationally and there is practical responsibility, the community contribution of teenagers in taking the initiative to find and implement real solutions will be recognized and true empowerment is passed naturally from one generation to the next.
Dear teenagers and parents of teenagers, life demands to be explored, embraced, and celebrated in all its splendor. Cultivate in yourselves the courage to look beyond the horizon, and don’t let yourself be numbed by sensations that tame your taste for true adventure. UNTOLD is more than just a festival, it is a symptom of a society that does not accept reality, a society that prefers the illusion of intense sensations… Choose reality beyond faking it through magical scenarios. These cheap masks will make you avoid confronting the truth of the problems in your life so that you can then have the chance to take the initiative to face them. This proves the toxicity of this cheap ecstasy because such an approach will necessarily block your authentic maturation! Take the initiative in the face of concrete problems and live the adventure of solving them!
