Ever have someone who articulates things you have been thinking about forever? Ever have someone who does this on a fairly regular basis in an incredibly eloquent way that puts your own thoughts on the subject to shame at the same time as you sigh with relief and say to yourself, “Ahhh – yes. Exactly.”?
Marissa Lingen is one of those people for me. I’ve directed my readers to her previously on the subject of only children. In her latest post, she discusses the high school experience, advice from adults on dealing with same, and how navigating the difficult waters of adolescence might not just produce a happier teenager, but a more sane, happy, whole adult.
I’ll include a few gems to whet your appetite, but if you like what you see here, please go read the whole thing. First:
Of course it’s useful if you can simply not care whether people around you are being hostile and nasty. But really, how many of us as adults can, by sheer force of will, make it totally not matter that we’re spending forty hours a week with people who are willing to be as unpleasant as they can get away with? Not many.*
and:
The win condition is that you can only remember the names of the ones who were kind and/or interesting to you. The win condition is that when you get news of something terrible happening to someone who smeared Ben Gay all over your friend’s locker or pushed another friend down the stairs or any of the other lovely things that happened in high school, you are not glad. Because you’re not just a bigger and better person than that, you’re so much bigger and better and have moved on with your life so far that you had to stop and think why that name sounded familiar. That’s what winning looks like.
and last:
But sitting down and thinking to yourself, “What would be interesting to me apart from graduation requirements and college applications and dodging the jerks at school? What do I want to be able to do?” might be a good start. Everyone has to build a life that’s irrelevant of the structures of high school eventually. Everyone has to find an identity that doesn’t involve where your locker is or who you sit with in the cafeteria. No reason not to start as soon as you can.
I was pretty lucky – I didn’t have to deal with the kind of toxic jackassery that Marissa details (in high school, at least. Middle school was another issue). But her advice and musings are instructive beyond the adolescent experience, beyond the confines of school and work. They reach to the core of a human being’s need for dignity and individual identity. I don’t know if I would have been smart enough to heed her advice then. I know I will at least try now.
*I would actually extend that statement beyond “people who are willing to be as unpleasant as they can get away with,” to a much lower bar of “people who can’t be bothered to extend the barest minimum of basic human courtesies.”
