>When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse.
I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".
I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".
Please don't single out gratuitous provocations in an article and then copy them into the thread to complain about them. It doesn't lead to interesting discussion. Best to just leave the provocation in its native habit and find something interesting (e.g. deeper or more surprising) to talk about. If you don't find anything like that, there are plenty of other articles to read.
For a real life example, I knew someone who was going through some pretty serious depression in high school. Responding to which their counselor said something along the lines of "you shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your life". Which was pretty devastating thing to say to someone.
And, for a lot of people, it's just not true. Maybe I'm really fortunate, but I can't remember a better time in my past life. I think for a lot of people, things generally get better as you age. You definitely get more autonomy, compared to when you were a child and teenager. Financially, you get established in your career, you save a little money, maybe you can even afford a home. Socially, you have better, closer friends as you get older. You can worry less and less about what other people think of you as you get older. I guess this is a little privilege showing, but generally I think my mental wellbeing is much better now than when I was a child or teenager.
High School was the absolute worst point in my life, and that's true for a lot of people I know. You lack autonomy, you're bored, you have no money, you're in a prison-like institution getting bullied for most of your weekday. You're under a lot of pressure and have to worry about grades and behaving the way adults want you to behave. It sucked! Who are these insane people where high school was the best time of their life?
If you don't come from a stable household your teenage years are going to be absolutely horrible. You're going to know enough to understand that the adults around you should do things like pay bills, but they just don't want to. They'd rather buy new cars and get them repoed.
I make an absurd amount of money now, and I'm grateful every time I pay my rent. Honest to God, if I could change one thing about the educational system I get rid of the idea that your parents are responsible to pay for your college.
If you're coming from a bad household this simply isn't going to work, but you'd be the most likely to benefit from a scholarship or financial aid. What ends up happening is this gets locked behind your parents doing basic things like filling out forms, but they're just incapable of doing it.
I can't put in words how devastating dropping out of college due to this stupid system was. Through the magic of programming I was able to still establish a great career, but when you come from a broken home you're just going to take hit after hit after hit.
I often need to distance myself from what I guess normal people struggle with. I'll see something stupid on Reddit like a man in his late 20s complaining that his parents want him to get a job, and I have to stop myself from screaming at my computer.
I don't know WTF was wrong with the rest of those people's lives, but, as someone approaching 40, ages ~12-18 were the worst part of my life and it's not even a close call. Everything before and after was much better. Working mediocre low-paying jobs was much better. College was like a vacation. Adult life is way better. Being a younger kid was way better. And I had a really normal HS experience, stable home life, et c., so it's not like I was being badly bullied or my parents were going through a divorce or something. Those years are just awful (school's about 70% of the problem with it, I'd say, and the other 30% is hormones)
When the odd suicidal ideation popped into my head, or if I was just way down in the dumps (both are pretty common for teenagers) the (absofuckinglutely wrong!) suggestion that things would only get worse was... not helpful.
My life objectively sucks more now. I have way less free time, and am under harsher constraints. But I am saddled with way less depression and anxiety. I am enjoying life more than ever. I don't go to sleep crying or ruminating every night anymore.
People saying "well your life sucks but it's only going to get worse" are inadvertently being mean and unhelpful. I can imagine probably offing myself, had I heard that advice at the wrong moment growing up.
It didn't get worse. It got better, even though the circumstances got worse, because my ability to handle them got much better.
Watering down the language a bit, I can see how a reasonable person would be mildly offended if another person told them: "you're living your life improperly".
Which is, ultimately, the received message. Yes you can't get a job in your field and your relationship is trashed, but your 20s are objectively the height of many metrics in your life. So are your 30s. (Unspoken: "I wish I still had the things you do, which you do not see/value. I also want all the things I have accumulated in the time since I was your age.")
So having some other person, typically older and who fancies themselves wiser, who knows not-nearly-enough about your life, opine that you should "enjoy" your current state...can be offensive in many cases!
And of course, as the star of our own autobiographies, we tend to inflate the importance of whatever drama-du-jour we're going through, and fail to take a longer view of things. This is generally the intended message of the speaker, but we often don't hear it that way, and anyway we don't want to be told.
Some messages can only be heard when they are explicitly sought.
Tongue somewhat in cheek, of course, but I do have a friend whose claim to the "Me too" movement was that an older gentleman had called her "young lady" once.
It seems this watering down of language was systemic and intentful. I'd love to know what generations, geographies, and cultures are afflicted most by this.
Friends say bands are "awesome", long meetings are "excruciating", guys in mock turtlenecks say products are "magical" or "revolutionary". Boys cry "wolf". What does it all mean?
What words do we choose when the correct words are no longer meaningful? What is the value of a word that describes a situation that almost never happens?
Do these exaggerations, or use of flowery language, carry any real world consequences? The words "abuse" and "violence" (and other vernacular that people are using around problems they face) carry consequences under the law, reputational damage, etc... I suspect the people who replace, "So and so said something that offended me" with "So and so said something that was abusive to me" know they're participating in deceptive language that carries real consequences.
I lean in the direction that these folks believe the ends justify the means but I've yet to hear anyone speak in earnest about why they do this. Usually when they explain themselves it involves a lot of imagery and mental gymnastics as well as a wide array of unprovable assumptions you must accept in order to understand their point but always conveniently skips over their language choice.
In fact, there's entire rhetoric designed to avoid this subject called "tone policing" whereby someone is allowed to make outrageous claims because they feel some way about something. It's then on the rest of us to sort out their emotional baggage from the hard facts and produce something from it.
Generally, I've noticed humans will use flowery language when bullshitting, speaking abstractly, or trying to sell something. When we talk about problems we tend to try to be more concise, as being concise lets us address the problem more directly while using flowery language is both deceptive and distracting.
Absurd exaggeration is the norm. That's fine in the form of metaphor (though I still dislike "murder" and "rape" to describe the vagaries of competitive sports and business!) but it's something else when the words can have legal/moral/professional ramifications.
Power gained by the previously-disempowered is rarely handled responsibly. But the powerless should be empowered. I don't know how to get from A to B without collateral damage.
And ultimately, there will be no reasoned conversation or balanced future. It will just happen, in fits and starts, and we will land in a new semi-stable state of imperfection. Until the next time.
It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it.
I have to disagree. My grandparents often have great perspectives on life situations that they readily share when relevant to the people around them. No one sees it as rude, and if they do, it’s usually because the advice hits a little too close to home. Like “when I went through my divorce…”
The truly insightful manage to prompt you to think without explicitly telling you to do so.
(And are sometimes wrong. People can in fact be living in a truly dismal present, whatever their age.)
"When I was your age, I didn't appreciate certain things so I'm pointing them out to you" is really different from "this is the best time of your life" which is a statement an external observer is just not equipped to make about someone else's life.
Not really. It's notional advice, offered in a spirit of kindness. You don't have to like it, but labeling it 'extremely rude at best' is absolutely infantile.
Using euphemism or calling it something better then it is is exactly as infantile as exaggerating. And if is lie too.
The author just appears to use complete hyperbole to get a reaction from his students and readers. Not to be taken seriously.
"I think what’s really important for emotional well-being is to know that your future is secure, to achieve the luxury of not worrying about your future. When you’re younger, there’s a lot to worry about. I sometimes tell my undergrads: When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. A lot of younger people have high rates of distress."
A better phrase from a person who wants to be taken seriously would be, "that can be naive," or "that's ignoring other people's burdens," "that's not always accurate," etc. "Form of abuse," is just over the top in my opinion.
He's certainly not doing anybody any favors hinting that they are the victim of something (abuse) when they are clearly not in his context.
Anecdotally, in my experience, this shift is really visible for 3-4 years now. I don't know what changed in these recent years or what caused that shift to become so drastic (again, in my experience). Internet gave a stage to these interpretation even though they were there previously in low volume.
But even on the internet, this wasn't the case until 5-6 years ago, at least not to this level (or so I think).
a) systems like Twitter giving people dopamine bumps and internet points for strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says and
b) peoples training their brains to have strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says
From my experience, something changed around 2017 and now Twitter is a war zone.
In this case, it would be the improper use of your life experience giving advice that causes more harm than good.
Maybe "misuse" would have been better suiting here.