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                   You are the Decider

“You will recognize your own path when you come upon it because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.”
Sara Teasdale

          There’s a lot of talk these days, and a lot of data to back it up, about the impact of bullying on social media especially on young women. Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg comes under fire about once a week for not doing enough to stop it. He’s becoming as familiar to Congressional committees as Nancy Pelosi’s gavel. There are too many suicides of young girls and too much pain and suffering for their families to dismiss it as teenage angst. Bullying on social media and in high school hallways is now an epidemic in America as much as drugs and alcohol. Last year alone, there was a 51% increase in suicide attempts in American teenagers. The isolation of the pandemic contributed greatly, but also the constant harassment on social media.

          Teenagers don’t yet have the ego strength to absorb the slings and arrows of petty jealousy or the bloodlust of young sociopaths who simply enjoy inflicting pain and watching the fallout. At the time it feels like it will never end, that this is what life will be like forever. But that is not true. Take it from someone who was mocked and belittled in high school too. High school is not forever, and the stupidity of other people does not define you. Five years from now, you won’t even remember their names.

          I have a theory about why bullying has become so widespread. In original cultures, children were put through initiation at puberty—both boys and girls. The initiation differed depending on the culture, but one part of it was a trial to overcome fear. The vision quest of the plains Indians comes to mind. The young person is taken into the desert or bush and left alone until a dream informs them of their true name and path, but some were even more harsh. Most involved hard labor and physical pain to the point of bleeding. In some cultures, after initiation boys were no longer allowed to live with their mothers but lived among men to learn the skills needed to become responsible adults. Because our culture has no such official rites of passage (beyond pretty ones like parties, or debutant balls, or Scouts) we instinctively create them—and they are as painful as any initiation rite of the First People. They are psychological tests of endurance. If you can live through high school, things really do get better.

          One way of surviving those four years is to spend them discovering your own path. What do you love? What are you truly good at? What brings you such joy that you lose track of time and forget to be self-conscious when you are doing it? What is your look? What clothes feel right, what hair style and color. You be the decider, the choice-maker. What lights the fire in your belly? You, do you.

          Teenagers are not the only ones who succumb to crowd following, and people pleasing. Too many of us allow the judgements made in high school to follow us into adulthood, and even into old age. We pay attention to fads and fashions, what’s trending and what’s passe. Right now, the fashion in home décor, for instance, is white everything. You walk into a house and are submerged in a cloud of whiteness. The only purpose of “trending” anything is to sell us something; to drive our consumer economy. Find your own taste and don’t worry about the rest. Your path will always be the right path for you. When it changes there will be a reason for the change that comes from inside you and not from some social media algorithm. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t even know you, so don’t give him or his platforms power over you. He was probably bullied in high school, too.

          I hope today you will realize that you are the definer of you—no matter what age you are. Become yourself. That’s what God intended.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane