Adolescence is a journey.
It has always been the path from childhood to adulthood,
and at a deeper level, the gateway to manhood and womanhood.
Adolescence is a process of personal and developmental
growth, and for tens of thousands of years adults have sculpted
and created clear paths for adolescents to navigate.
Modern culture
has all but eliminated these time tested approaches, leaving current
teens to navigate the turbulent waters of adolescence without
a map or guidance. Universally,
almost every traditional culture came upon the same dynamics for
working their adolescents; mostly the deliveries differed.
It’s critical to remember that they did this for a reason:
millennia of trial and error led almost all cultures, often isolated
from other cultures and communities, to come to the same conclusion
that adolescents need to be guided forward in a clear and specific
way.
They did this
through initiation practices, enduring and surviving rites of
passage, using the Hero’s Journey that mythology expert Joseph
Campbell synthesized out for us.
Campbell broke down this elaborate system into three phases: Separation,
Initiation, and Return. While Initiation, Rites of
Passage, and the Hero's Journey seem to be synonymous, and they
are certainly interrelated, they each have a distinct flavor to
them.
On the path to
adulthood, Initiation is the process of the trip, the need to
move up and forward. It
is the understanding that growth is up there, further ahead on
the path. If an initiate’s
challenge is to cross a great river, that would be his or her
Rite of Passage, the challenge they would need to overcome. Challenge
is the key ingredient in rites of passage, and risk is the key
to growth. The vessel they would take to cross this river would
be the Hero’s Journey, the actual sequence of developmental changes
they go through along the way.
Adolescence can
be viewed in another mythological way, that of the labyrinth.
Most people do not realize there is a distinct difference
between a labyrinth and a maze.
A maze is built to be confusing to the participant.
Blind alleys and blocked paths confuse and confound the
traveler, making this journey difficult and frustrating.
Conversely, a labyrinth is a single guided path, allowing
a clear direction to the center and back out again.
Without the confusion and frustration of a maze, labyrinths
offer a more subtle, internally focused trip where one learns
from the quietness within.
Modern culture
has created a scenario where adolescents are expected to get through
the maze on their own. The
maze is what happens when we look at adolescence as “a phase to
get through.” The
maze creates anger and lots of failure along the way, often leading
the traveler nowhere at all.
Getting stuck is common, which often leads to quitting.
The universal
structure of initiations and rites of passage were built on the
principle of the labyrinth: to create a clear and simple path
to adulthood without all the negativity, difficulty, and arbitrariness
of the maze. This
simple path was created, supported and mentored by those who had
walked it previously. The
labyrinth represents a trail followed by countless others before,
marked clearly for future generations to follow.
Like the rock cairns left on a hazy trail by the person
who walked there prior, these trails were monitored and maintained
for all to use. Many,
or most of the ‘guides’ were the elders, giving back and passing
on their knowledge. Sadly,
elder mentors have become almost extinct in this day of forced
retirement, moving to warmer climates, and in the breakdown of
extended families.
Thus, today’s
teens meander an unmarked trail, the rock cairn aids discarded
and ignored. They
plow ever forward, stumbling into the blocked passages and closed
pathways, looking for signs or clues to the correct direction
but not finding them. There
is no clear criteria for them to follow or emulate, and they often
become lost or take the wrong path.
Adolescence has
an often negative image in modern society, although this has not
always been the case. Historically,
modern adolescent behavior is the exception rather than the rule.
There’s a reason so many independent and isolated communities
all came across the same dynamics for helping their adolescents
through this difficult coming of age period: it worked.
Traditional, indigenous cultures did not have the luxury
or resources for pursuing and embracing approaches that did not
work in their favor. The
universality of these approaches worldwide and historically is
a clear indication of how well they worked and the necessity of
providing them.
We, the former
travelers of adolescence, are required by love, history, and experience
to create clearer paths for our youth, to provide maps for them
to follow, and to remodel our mazes into labyrinths.
One of the great crimes in modern times has been to steal
these practices from our youth, to prohibit them from pursuing
the path all adults should have walked by forcing them into the
maze, and taking away the responsibility and rewards of walking
the labyrinth laid out before them.
The second greatest crime has been in holding this irresponsibility
and lack of guidance against them.
