ADOLESCENCE

 

Rules, everywhere. They encircle you from the beginning of your first attempt to breathe in order to be a citizen in a society which demand a certain behaviour. You are born into a family who grows up as a submember to be guided. The parents are the arbitrary decision maker who have the burden to show you the “right way” without real knowledge about it. By leading you they they are also under the influence of the society in its concept of life. The social norms are therefore like a constant companion reflected as an omnipresent conscience. It determined your parents and everybody who will influence you on the way to be an adult. You learn the duties and rules fast without questioning them. The power of authority is like a guarding protection. It manages daily processes and sets order. As your character developes, nature hands you another present: hormons in the stage of adolesence. To fall a decision becomes harder. All of the sudden you are insecure, what was the truth yesterday can be totally wrong for today. If your beliefs get further challenged, how can you accept authorities who couldn’t prepare you for these upcoming questions, neither show you a way out of this dilemma?Time to revolt!Beside all the inherent confussion, the adolescence stage might be the most honest time you will experience. Unfortunately at the same moment you miss the tool of experience to handle your emotions. By questioning everybody and everything you will feel confused but free. Love and death appear as the base of life, you get aware of it and it freaks you out.The intensity might various between soft and overwhelming but the call of nature is the same for us all: it is time to be independent. The base of skills you learned should be solid enough to find your way without big struggle. But what is your way? Nature ask you for two things, to survive and to reproduce. Society ask you to fit in and be a successful member or at least a quiet one. But the transitional period puts you in a conflict. In times of physical and psychological changes you get in trouble with the consistent moralsystem. This system is a result of decades in which it was transformed several times, added by more and more laws to handle new aspects of social interaction. Even if most people accept the resulting laws it is common that laws don’t reflect the fundament of peaceful living with others like the old creeks wrote them down, laws go a few steps further into your liberty. In the stage of adolescence your moral is still intact but your boundaries become blurred and strengthen doubts to laws and duties which are more then this inner catalog of behavior. You question this authority, an authority which sees itself as given and unique. But it is the transmission to be individual which points out that the needs and wishes of you are not represented in a system of equality.

Civilized nations have to remember the reason they were invented. Freedom. This freedom is not just characterised by building a society which deciplines. While creating a safe environment of supply and protection it has the task to keep your creativity and freedom of choice. The actual existing construction is an intimidating corset which has to be loosen up to let its citizens respire again. We are living in a sarcastic society which leads us to forget that we are a part of nature. People sit in theaters like unemotional robots who forgot why they want to be entertained. Women prepare their breast milk in bottles or even worse, feed their babies with manufactured products cause they ate afraid of feeding naturally in public. It is rare to see somebody singing out loud his favorite song while walking. We kill the joy, we limit selfexpression that most people need drugs to run free. We might should listen to our rebelling inner voice which screams out the irrationality surrounding us. To keep this energy has to be a goal of society, to take chances and find your way will still be up to you.