identification as competent individuals. Adolescence is a time during which there is no meaningful role for our youth, and they often mark time by playing the role of "teen-ager." At a time of full emergence of sexuality and the need to know how to direct it into socially acceptable forms, our society fails miserably to provide guidance. The mind has now developed to the point where a person can introspect and think about his/her own thinking. So a great deal of existential questioning goes on with no answers apparent. The culture is silent about what makes my life meaningful. Silent about Spirit.
Loneliness due to the separations that have been culminating combines with sexual urges to produce romantic love which is fed by sex-role stereotypes to produce remarkably deviant relationships. These are deviant in the sense that they are not based upon anything substantial upon which to create a lasting union with the other person. The heartbreak that results from these tentative efforts at intimacy can still be felt in middle age decades later. Who does not remember their first love?
Because we do not provide our children with any education about how to be parents or how to be intimate in relationship, over two-thirds of the marriages in this country end in divorce. We don't know how to be intimate. And this ignorance causes untold heartbreak and anguish of loneliness. It begins in adolescence when the urges come to fruition, when love affairs fail and we are rejected or betrayed (often because of stereotypes of attractiveness). We are separated from our hearts, we learn not to trust them. Openheartedness is something we need to relearn, along with the trust that was forfeited back in infancy.
According to Erikson (1968), development of trust is the first task we have in life, one that is encountered in infancy and which depends upon adequate loving and mothering for its fruition. All other developmental tasks (autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, generativity and integrity) depend upon this one for their successful emergence. When our hearts are closed, our lives go into a state of rigidity as a defense against further vulnerability. And spiritual development ceases. In the resulting isolation, adults try to find meaning in relationships and family or in their work. But nothing can substitute for the real Love and connection that we all seek. When the pain comes to a head, the search begins. . . .
excerpted from "Return to Spirit: Disheartenment" - http://www.spiritsong.org/intro.htm
