I saw a teenager splitting a piece of wood with an ax, and it took me way back. You don’t see that in urban surroundings. I stood there with my kids to watch him for a bit, and told them that I used to do that merely every winter day when I was a teenager, too. I couldn’t remember when was the last time I wielded an ax, but it was probably around 15 years ago, the winter before I left for university. The house I lived in with my grandmother those years was heated by a wood/coal burning stove, and if I wanted to feel warm, I knew exactly what I needed to do.
My mom lived in a different city, my dad was off living in his brand new house with his wife and a couple of kids and a couple of newborns. He did buy the wood and coal for us, but the rest was on me. I tend to not think of it much. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the swing of an ax, the way my muscles and my coordination worked together to achieve precision as tiny pieces of kindling fell down. I can’t say it was easy work, though even gym obsessed high school boys would compliment my toned arms. But the cold was a tangible, physical kind of discomfort that had a clear, fail-proof path toward resolution, relief, a biological elegance to it. Much different to the kind of discomfort we find ourselves feeling these days.
Psychological discomfort doesn't work this way. Anxiety, restlessness, loneliness, disconnection, dissociation, meaninglessness, the low-grade hum of feeling vaguely off have no address. There's no wood to split, no stove to feed, no external deficit that can be resolved the way we'd resolve physical discomfort. They're pointing inward. Yet, they feel like physical discomfort: urgent, unpleasant, demanding relief, and we try to treat them the same way. We reach outward for a solution to something that pains us on the inside.
I feel it often. The urge to go to HomeSense and get some beautiful new decor, as if orange flower pots might finally let me see my life for the beautiful that it is. The desire to throw away half of my family's belongings, thinking it will expand my lungs enough to take a full breath. The urge to put on a movie instead of discussing the difficult thing with my spouse. We reach for consumption, convenience and distraction. And the reach feels productive, feels like doing something, which is part of why it’s so hard to stop.
The solution we reach for is external and temporary. Consume and distract, feel briefly relieved. When discomfort returns, ever magnified, do it again. Wrong strategy applied to the wrong problem, over and over, with increasing sophistication.
Our children are introduced to this loop so early on, before they've had any chance to develop the internal resources that might address what's on the inside.
The solution to an internal feeling is usually internal too. Identify it, follow it somewhere. Mildly anxious, mildly restless child, left alone, would do something interesting: it would move. Restlessness into physical energy to be spent, anxiety into a worry that can be examined and addressed, or a fear to be exposed to until it dissolves. Helping our children gain the confidence that an unpleasant internal state won't last forever and doesn't need emergency action is a radically countercultural thing to nurture in a child right now. Everything around them is advertising the opposite.
The ambient anxiety of modern childhood is seen in performance pressure, lack of physical movement, utter self-focus, social complexity, the strange dislocation of growing up partly online and the list is only getting longer. Children are carrying more internal discomfort than previous generations with far less practice tolerating discomfort at all. What they will learn and repeat is influenced by what the adults around them are doing.
Will I indulge and speed off to a store to spend the money I don’t really have on things that I think will make me feel calm and happy? Or will I sit at the sewing machine and start creating something beautiful and lasting? Will I rage-clean or take a walk in the rain and come back to a warm, dry home and feel like the luckiest person in the world? Will I purge possessions or take my favorite mug and make a hot cup of coffee and be relieved that I can sit and enjoy it because the kids are playing by themselves with the lot of toys all around? Will I get over my fears of uncertainty and not wanting to hear things that I disagree with, because I know the only way forward is to compromise and strategize together? The better I get at noticing where my escape routes will not be leading me, the better I get at choosing more wisely. Will I numb or will I live? Will I flee or will I find, in myself, enough to wait it out?
Go chop some wood, Aleksandra.
I’m deeply grateful to everyone who reads, reflects, and supports these posts. Thank you for being here. If you find this post worthwhile, please like, share, subscribe and consider becoming a paid subscriber. It truly helps Curious and Capable Kids reach more people.
You may also like:
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.