The confusion of choice

I work with a lot of young people, from ages 8 upwards and many at around 14 – 19, they come with a myriad of problems as you can imagine, but underlying many of these is stress and anxiety.

They feel confused and don’t understand the rules that society, education and family places on them and are often at a loss as to how to engage with their environment, or so often they simply can’t see the point!

This has got me thinking, as even as an adult it can be a minefield.  How do we agree on a model for growing and aging? How do we find our place in the world when so many of the accepted rules which were traditionally passed down from the elders in society,  to the children, throughout history,  have been abandoned (many rightly so) but with nothing to replace them, other than the idea of free choice.

Free choice is great as it opens up a world of possibilities, but as our lives are changing so fast, there is little or no framework for our young people to understand the consequences of those choices or elders to learn from, or a wish to learn from elders who appear to be lacking in current ways of thinking and doing, who are outdated!. Most of us would agree that our children should have a choice but how do they know what they need to navigate their way in the world, without the traditional passing down of wisdom in this way.

So that other than through seeing someone like me, how do we help our children, when the next generation feels more at home in the world as it is now, when teenagers know more than their parents about some things like technology, it disrupts the traditional order of things, of the passing down of knowledge.

If our children know more than us about some things, there can be an assumption that they know more about everything, and that leaves them with an expectation that they can do anything they choose.

However without going through the rites of passage that historically most cultures and religions across the world have had, and involved the collective wisdom being learnt and passed down to the youngsters, followed by a ritual to mark the shift into adulthood, our children are so often floundering, the established rules are no longer and there is nothing adequate to replace them.

What I teach the clients I work with is how to manage the choice from a more internal control, to let go of the confusion about all the information that is coming in and the mindreading that it often entails about what others think of us and to understand that when others give us advice, whether parents, teachers or others, that instead of dismissing it out of hand, they are encouraged to change positions and understand things from the other perspective, to get a clearer insight of the intentions behind this advice, letting go of the need to be right or in control and understanding how we all want the best and are so often on the same side but with different information, so they can make better, more informed decisions about their lives.

The same can be true in reverse that often our young people have great wisdom to share and a perspective that comes from a less cluttered mind, and different ways of seeing, freeing us all up in this way can be so liberating and of course, all too soon, our youngsters will be doing their best to teach their own children.