Most humans enter a season when, underneath the typical ups and downs of life, they experience a relentless ache, a sense that life just isn't right. The ache doesn't go away until their relationships and career have been stabilized, until they know where they will live, who their friends and in-laws will be, and what role they will play in their community.
This is a serious matter because the typical length of that season has grown over the last couple centuries among the upper and middle classes of developed countries. A man used to start a marriage and carpentry business (both for life) as a teenager; now he may have to wait until his late twenties before he knows whether he is ready to wed or will need to relinquish his plan to be a doctor or a manager.
It is no longer appropriate to chuckle at an adolescent impatient to grow-up, as though this were a cute and brief phase of childhood. Telling a fourteen-year-old to wait fourteen more years for her ache to go away is like telling her to wait a lifetime. In those fourteen years, she may learn to live with the ache, she may become comfortable with divorce and career change. Because that happens to so many people, she may inherit a world in which relationships aren't expected to last, where growing-up is a thing of the past. Instead of a chuckle, we need to be able to respond with some sympathy and comfort.
Explaining the ache, that it is normal, is a start. But some adolescents will find this too theoretical--they need us to address their feelings. For this reason, I recommend that everyone record their feelings, preferably in some poetic way, as they pass through this season. Later in their lives, they will likely need to express sympathy to someone else, perhaps their own son or daughter, who is passing through it.
Here's a song I wrote when I was feeling this frustration:
Learning to be happy is a big self-delusion--
Let's admit that we're miserable, and do something about it!
You can call me a "dreamer", but at least I'm not hiding.
You can settle for second-best now, but who'll hate themselves when they're sixty?
The truth will never die.
You'll face me again, and you'll face me again,
For the dreamer does not lie.
There's truth in a dream, and truth we cannot deny.
The poor retch in the street has nothing, knows nothing, wants nothing,
And we pity him, for we know what life could be.
We pity his ignorance, and call the same a virtue.
So does the dreamer pity you.
You think the world is normal; he sees the world in contrast,
(To see what is is to know what could be).
Yes, we are far below potential, and the dreamer, does he scare you?
Because he sees you as you are? Because he sees how you are ugly?
Wake up! Oh, we shall always be ugly.
There shall always be dreams far beyond our greatest heights.
Don't hide from the mirror, for truth itself is beauty,
And who you are is not as important as what you dream...
The truth will never die.
You'll face me again, and you'll face me again,
For the dreamer does not lie.
There's truth in a dream, and truth we cannot deny.
Not everyone aches to be appreciated as some sort of social critic--we each ache for our own place in this world, and social criticism just happens to be my particular passion. The resolution of the ache, in my case, was not to negotiate some relationship with my world in which I am appreciated for being myself; it was simply to develop patience. I know the ache went away because this song reminds me how angry and frustrated I used to be. It also helps me to sympathize with others who long to find their own place in this world (or the next).
Maybe your song would be about defending what you believe in, or about nurturing another person. Whatever your passion, write your song when your passion is greatest. Passions do fade, and it is becoming more and more important to preserve your ability to sympathize with people waiting to grow up.
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