“Been There…Done That”

A life led without out regret is a rare one. Most will look back on their youth with the realization they could have avoided so many miscues had they had the knowledge they possessed later in life. For some reason, which undoubtably includes a level of shame or fear of loss of stature, most do not reveal this knowledge gained by mistake and transgression to those following behind. Unlike the trusted scout sent out alone, charged with the responsibility of finding and reporting back all information regarding location, size and strength of the enemy to the advancing force, most will keep the knowledge gained from personal mistakes to themselves, recounting only success in a misguided form of challenge to encourage achievement. It is not necessary for everyone to learn that the stove is hot by burning their hand. The concept of dangerous heat can be explained by those who have accidentally touched a hot stove and felt the pain.

It saddens me to see young people struggle with anxiety. They are so vexed by that which they face. The young people of today have grown up so fast in this modern world. They become engage in adult activities before they have the experience to navigate them. They grow to physical maturity, are sexually active, become enthralled in relationships, experiment with alcohol and drugs and many live away from the support of their parents and siblings. The reality is that while young people have all the outward appearances of being adult, they lack any history in that role. The emotional outcomes that result from adult behaviors can become the source of major anxiety as maturity becomes on-the-job training. This is not a condescending indictment of youth; on the contrary, it is an informed understanding of a man who can remember being young once. High upon the perch of the knowledge gained from a life led, it is a conclusion lacking in insight for adults to judge young people’s lives as easy. To those misguided adults, the young seem to be unencumbered by real responsibility and therefore they should be consistently happy. This flawed viewpoint does not take into account an underlying truth that blocks all happiness for some. Young people on the cusp of adulthood have never been faced with adult situations and without the perspective of past comparable circumstances, each change or setback can appear dire.

It is beyond tragic when a young person, deep in the throes of anxiety, which is powered by problems they think are insurmountable, ends their precious life. As adults we shake our heads and wonder why they took such drastic and final action. When we are posthumously made aware of the details of their struggles, our assessment of their problems is almost universal; not so bad and definitely correctable. We collectively lament their final choice and wish that they had told us about their internal struggle and accompanying anxiety so we could have lent our experience to help them conquer their very solvable problems. But they are gone, a victim of anxiety which caused them to feel misunderstood, alone, unique in their weakness, and out of control.

Young adults today are like the person who is in the first day of employment or the new player on the established team. As adults we are the high seniority employee at the company or the veteran on the team. We have options in dealing with the new person. We can join in with the insensitive few and enjoy their floundering. We can ignore the difficulties they are having and rationalize that they will better off by learning from their own mistakes. We can even claim that we were busy and did not notice their struggles. These are all options and they are the ones most chosen but there is another choice. We can remember our first day on the job or the overwhelming nervousness of the first practice with the new team. In that mindset we can reach out and give comfort and advice from a place of knowledge and experience.

I build items for clients; small things like cabinets and furniture. I also do larger projects such as repurposing of rooms and spaces in and around their homes. The work I do in these projects is almost exclusively done with wood. Even though I have extensive experience in commercial construction, and I have had great success in satisfying my clients; I am not a carpenter. I am a man with a vast collection of tools and a mind which can solve problems. So I begin each project with a certain level trepidation fueled by a nagging insecurity; a lack of real training in carpentry. The anxiety caused by my lack of formal training creates a crisis in confidence in regard to job completion. But I also know from experience that the way to combat the anxiety is to dissect the project into specific actions. Once the project is broken down into separate parts, I can see that some of the tasks are ones I have completed before. The completion of portions of the job reveals the answers to others. The beginning of the journey provides an emerging view of the finished product. The vision of the finished product cancels some of the initial thoughts of inadequacy and begins to enhance the confidence of experience; anxiety retreats under the pressure of control incrementally gained. Calm returns and the finished product rises out of the abstract and into reality. Just as it does in every facet of my existence, another experience is filed away to be used to help alleviate some of the anxiety encountered at the next fork in the proverbial road.

I have experienced many trying times in my life and each has had its level of stress and the accompanying anxiety. There were moments in many of these events when I thought I was beyond my ability to cope. In those circumstances of high anxiety, I would question my human value and if I even wanted to survive my current calamity; fortunately I was able to survive. In the process of overcoming my problems I learned that in certain junctures of every life there are going to be mistakes made which produce a profound sense of being unable to control ones future. The key to moving past personal controversy was to fight the debilitating affects of anxiety with the perspective gained from experience. The thorny part of this retrospective knowledge is the what-ifs it creates. With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that some of my self-inflicted troubles might have been sidestepped if there had been adults in my life willing to show me examples of their own lapses in judgement in an effort to help me to avoid rather than repeat the mistakes of in the hidden part of their youth. Although it is far from a certainty that I would have listen to any advice in my young adult life it does create a sense of wonder.

I do not have children of my own but I have had many in my charge as a coach and trainer. I have found that the best way to get a crucial point across or to capture the attention of a young person is to build a bridge of communication using my own experiences; not those that recount my triumphs and successes but those which highlight my mistakes and recoveries. This bridge built with my missteps reduces the sense of aloneness in the anxiety driven mind of the young person. It creates a place of togetherness in the struggles of life and allows for my experiences to help those who are at a particular crossroad for the first time. As seasoned adults we can make it easier on young people if we just allow ourselves to chronicle the anxiety we felt in our youth and thus show them that survival of their current state of mind is more than possible because the problems they are facing are not the stuff of doom. Our credibility can be established quite simply by the self-deprecating admission, “Been there, done that”.