Just like GEN.*
So much is written about the differing generations and the impact each has on how society and the workplace are affected.
What we don't always remember are the Agers—those who reach a certain moment in their lives where changes accelerate past their understanding of what all the 'mones' and groans around them are really about.
Yep, it's hormones—and how deadly they can be.
What is it that takes a calmly compliant kid and forms a rebellious, raucous, precocious wannabe adult?
That would be all those hormones, waiting in the wings, stepping out onto the giant stage of life, never having understood the precarious nature of such a show.
And the impact?
A sudden down-to-earth reality, coupled with a life-shattering shame that affects their ability to live a normal life—once the dust has settled.
Okay, so this doesn’t happen to everyone, but boy, how parents suffer trying to prevent the inevitable.
This has been the recurring theme in many of my conversations of late. With each of us getting older, many of their kids have also reached this momentous stage in life. And adults, bent on providing a stable home, income, and lifestyle, have had little time to prepare themselves for the onslaught.
It starts with the refusals. That brief rebellious moment when the waters are tested. This defines the level of their next attacks. That threshold between vulnerability and superhuman ability is opaque at best. Many step across it expecting the world to open up directly before them—only to discover that even the simplest of tasks is fraught with ‘danger’ and uncertainty.
Fogy remembers a conversation he had with a 19-year-old who had recently arrived in São Paulo. The conversation revolved around the challenges of adapting to the kind of life in the big city—so different from the rural lifestyle she had lived before. There was nothing particularly new in what she was saying—until she launched into the impacts of coming of age.
She began to talk about the day before and the day after her 18th birthday.
"I really didn't have any worries when I was 17—no responsibilities, no obligations. But the moment I turned 18, everything was my responsibility. I had never understood what I would be required to do, to sign, to pay for, to be responsible for. The shock and the learning were almost terrifying."
Okay, so I’ve changed her style a little—she wasn’t quite that eloquent—but the points she made are very clear.
And here we need to reflect on the teen agers—those about whom I am writing.
We have always tempted fate, challenged the rules, tried to determine where those life limits lie. It seems to be a lifelong quest for a great number of us.
For teenagers, however, that period of time when their hormones have released them from the fears of childhood—there is a very short window in which they can continue to challenge the constraints of their comfort zones before they are thrust into the realms of adulthood and the consequences that follow.
Laws and rules have allowed a certain leniency towards those thrill seekers—probably based on some long-forgotten understanding of how those lawmakers also suffered through those turbulent years.
This means that massive efforts in re-education must be put in place for all and sundry. Not the formal type—but the openness, the awareness, that ordinary, simpler folk seem to have neglected for far too long. That reflection of what it was like when they were growing up. How difficult it was for them—and their parents—to cope.
Is it really so different today?
Not really.
Most of the challenges remain the same. Only the underlying tools have changed, the overpowering risks have grown, and the ignorance of so many has become so much more expansive.
No real words of wisdom here.
But a satisfying rant, nonetheless.
Cheers.
—Fogy
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