The problem with problems

One of the largest struggles that I've had since I started out on my own in the world is how to cope with the challenges that present themselves in my life. 

How does today's society influence us in creating coping strategies?
Many would surely argue that it's now easier than ever to not only find the support you need in coping with the typical challenges in life, but also be confident that the decision to do so will not be misinterpreted by the consensus.  Generally speaking, I would assume that this evolution in public perception is largely responsible for the improvement in the mental well-being of countless souls that would have toiled too significantly under the weight of their own psyche.  Practices such as psychotherapy, counseling, and meditation are entirely well and good, for those in such situations, because it gives many the courage to formally address their challenges without fear of judgment or condemnation from family and colleagues. 

What about the "other" problems?
Where does this leave those whose mental struggles differ from the norm, yet are still challenging to grapple with?  Speaking from my own personal experience, the traditionally "big" issues like relationship strife, loss of a loved one, job unhappiness, and family discord are in many cases dormant and in others, completely unknown to me.  To take this a step further, the current 20-something model, which affords me the ability to fluidly adapt my circumstances to changes in disposition, should make it simple for someone like myself to easily dodge any rain clouds that might appear on the horizon.  To top it off, I would be the first person to admit that the things I would consider to be my life's "challenges" are laughable to most, irrelevant to many, and not truly that challenging, relatively speaking. 

So why does everyone seem to struggle at some point?
Perhaps our minds create the struggle because we believe we're hard-wired to do so as a term of the human contract.  Or maybe it's because we simply love having a story to tell, as it caters to our inherently self-indulgent sensibilities.  Regardless, in the end, I believe the answer lies inherently within and dependent upon our evolving mental condition and our collective minds' inherent inabilities to rapidly adjust.  More simply stated, for each stride we make in our ability to fulfill our basic needs and cope with the challenges of old, a new set of mental hurdles will present themselves.  And I'm not speaking of issues such as global warming, human poverty, etc. - those problems are systemic in nature and will require the strength of all humanity to resolve.

 What are today's challenges?
I'm speaking of the personal struggles of the 21st century - issues such as the exercising of personal privacy in a rapidly-opening world, the discovery of a "life's calling" amongst comparatively infinite amounts of opportunities, the pursuit of life balance in the face of limitless opportunities to overindulge, the belief in a higher power in an increasingly secular society, and the establishment of fulfilling personal relationships in a populace more heavily bent towards "me first" than ever.  And I would argue that no matter how well we think we were raised, or how significant of a "common thread" may appear to exist between these issues and others in the past, this period in our humanity has presented us these challenges in a way that makes them completely unique to anything else we've previously experienced. 

So what's the best approach?
In the end, I think it's critical for us to find coping strategies and mechanisms, similar to how we have done before - the power of mental therapy should be entirely supported.  However, the challenge lies in the fact that the questions to ask towards self-discovery are different than the ones from before, and the answers are also more likely to be specific to the individual.  In other words, one size fits all just simply won't work.  However, we shouldn't go it alone, because there's too much at stake - I'm firmly convinced that it's a more dangerous world than ever for the mind in personal turmoil.

Virtue in the eyes of the average human

Which is more virtuous: to be grateful for what you have, or be forgetful of what you don't?

Is it neither?
Strangely, perhaps there may be a time and place for neither, from what I can surmise.  I feel like at certain junctions, the only way to evolve beyond ourselves is to focus on what we could have in the way of strengths and capabilities, rather than what we currently possess.  It's certainly a noble goal to pour our hearts into becoming stronger lovers when we fight, or better winners/losers.  The power of this concept can be amplified when we see others possessing these defining characteristics that we don't currently - yet should rightfully - posses.

OK, but...
Supposing that the appropriate times and places to "ignore" these virtues are limited in nature, though, and must be executed in the pursuit of noble outcomes, I think we find ourselves in a society where we're pushing them away in a rampantly inappropriate manner.  Some would argue that this is natural, as humans; our vanity drives us to take our temporal gifts for granted and our envy moves us towards anger over those that we lack.  Yet regardless of where you stand on the debate regarding whether or not we - as humans - are inherently good or evil, it can't be ignored that those tendencies are extremely real.

So whose fault is it?
This may sound really crass, but I'm honestly starting to feel like it's too ambitious to expect the average person to be able to practice the two concepts on a consistent basis.  In our culture, which enshrines the notion of individualistic achievement as a noble approach, we simply haven't built the appropriate motivational frameworks to stimulate humans in a way that makes them grateful for their good fortunes and ignorant to the voices of envy. To top it off, the spiritual will then suggest that this is where humanity needs God to step in, to remind humans to be cognizant of their sinful tendencies and teach them how to live in a manner that rejects them.  Yet when stated like that, it almost seems like religious constructs remain to simply fill a void that we, as humans, have been too foolish to fill for ourselves with humanistic equivalents such as ethics and reason.

So in the end...
I think humans have the innate ability to practice both, without the support of the metaphysical, assuming we could create the appropriate environment that would foster them.  And to answer the initial question, I think they're equally important.  The critical job remains, however, of making them relevant to the average Joe.

The least traditional "sad to be lonely guy" rant, ever...

I've been thinking quite a bit about this topic over the last 17 months since I last posted on this blog.  It seems that the average 20-something goes through quite a bit of change during that period of their lives.  Frequent moves, new jobs, evolving relationships - some may argue that flexibility is more essential at this time than any other.  I'd even take it a step further that we, as 20-somethings, take pride in the fact that our loose ties with some of the classical "adult" social constructs (conviction of faith, starting of a family, commitment to a job/career path, etc.) provide us this freedom to make whatever decisions we want in pursuit of our own perceptions of happiness.  However, I've found that this path has led me down many lonely streets since I've last posted, which to me, implies that it hasn't always been the most fruitful approach.

So besides the risk of being alone on the trail, what is the long-term risk here?  I'd argue that our current societal framework depends heavily on the acceptance of the "adult" constructs at this pivotal point in our lives.  The good news, though, is that we certainly aren't required to continue building our societies around them if we choose not to.

Can we, as 20-somethings, take the next generation into more formal "community-based" models?  We certainly have iterations of them today all over the world (cities, villages, etc.) but I'd argue that capitalism and its offspring have driven us, in some strange way, to narrow our minds when it comes to the larger community.  We seek the best outcomes for ourselves and our families in a way that oftentimes ignores the importance of bringing along the community as a whole.

I like the idea of being able to fully depend on a whole host of people - in the same way that many end up relying on one, at present - to talk me off the ledge when I'm struggling.  However, I feel like until we stop thinking "me first", we're stuck with trying to find one other person to share our vision, with a 50/50 chance (at best) of that mutual dependency lasting the rest of our lives.  Those odds are pretty daunting when we're talking about "forever".   I would liken the change I'd push for to the Web 2.0 evolution, which has moved us away from static hierarchies and traditional models into more fluid, community-based, and rapid-responding frameworks.

Does that even make sense?  Or in the end, am I really just writing all of this because I'm tired of feeling like the outcomes I've had in the past few years make me feel  like the pursuit of "the one" is an outdated model?

On the issue of cooperation

I read a great little story today that I thought I'd share here... It's something for all of us to think about in a world that tells us that we should only look out for number one...

Two children are in the kitchen; each wants an Oreo cookie, but there is only one left. A parent is near the kitchen and hears the discussion regarding the cookie and decides to let her children solve the problem. The discussion becomes very heated and fearing one child might injure the other, the parent rushes in and solves the problem by cutting the cookie in half. The first child takes one half, scrapes the creamy filling from the cookie, eats the filling and throws the outside of the cookie away. The second child takes the other half, scrapes the creamy filling from the cookie, throws away the filling and eats the outside of the cookie.

Of course, you can guess the moral of this story - if both parties had listened to what the other party was saying, they both could have had twice as much of what they wanted.  I know this little vignette probably grossly oversimplifies more complex disagreements.

But does it really, though?

On the issue of diversion

I was surfing around online a few nights ago looking for a good movie to stream via Netflix. Having read a bunch of reviews, I decided to try a documentary about the 2008 election campaigns. I started watching it when it hit me that I was hungry, so I drove down to Burger King and got some food: listening to the artist of my choice on demand via Pandora on my Blackberry.

This was all going on, of course, while I had a bunch of work to do that I was consciously avoiding. Could it really have been that easy to distract myself? A thousand times, yes.

I understand that historians will look back at this time and call it the dawn of the "Information Age", and today's 20-somethings will have been the first generation to be born into it. Though most agree that living in this age allows people "to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously" (thanks Wikipedia!), I think that access goes worlds beyond just knowledge. Broadly speaking, 20-somethings have never known a time when it wasn't extremely simple to scratch a curiosity itch or consume some sort of content (music, video, text, etc.)

Unfortunately, I think this can be a double-edged sword in the hands of many. For example, during college, I watched friends blow-off course work, bomb tests, and in many cases, even social interactions because their attention was so easily diverted by the myriad stimuli around them. In the work world, I see the same thing. And of course, as I alluded to above, it would be pretty dishonest of me if I didn't state that I fall victim to distractions like this on a semi-regular basis. In all this, I'm not surprised that our parents generally possessed better work ethic!

So what can we do to rise above it? One strategy that I'm trying is to set limits for myself on how much time I waste each day on Facebook or watching that third Seinfeld re-run. I've been trying to give myself 1.5 hours a day during the week. I recognize that this is probably not getting to the root of the issue, though - somewhere inside, I still have a tendency to procrastinate. It doesn't seem like I'm alone, either .

So, really, why do we get so easily diverted from the task at hand? I'm not entirely certain, but I just saw on Facebook that someone posted 50 new photos...