Being unhappy is never wholly to be recommended, but if there is any period of life in which
if the mood may be justified and in certain ways important, then it is roughly between
the ages of 13 and 20. It is hard to imagine going on to have a successful or even somewhat
contented next six decades if one has not been the beneficiary of a good deal of agonising
introspection and intense dislocation in this span. At the root of adolescent sorrow and
rage is the recognition that life is hugely harder, more absurd and less fulfilling than
one could ever hitherto have suspected – or had been led to suppose by kindly representatives
of the adult world. The sentimental protection of childhood falls away – and a range of
searingly malevolent but profoundly important realisations strike. For a start, one recognises
that no one understands. That isn’t quite true, but of course, the more complicated
any human being is, the less likely they are to be easily and immediately understood. Therefore,
as a child develops into an adult, the chances of those around them exactly sympathising
with and swiftly grasping their inner condition necessarily decreases sharply. The first response
of the teenager is to think themselves uniquely cursed. But the better eventual insight is
that true connection with another person is possible yet astonishingly rare. This leads
one to a number of important moves. Firstly, to a heightened and more appropriate gratitude
towards anyone who does understand. Secondly, to greater efforts to make oneself understood.
The sullen grunts of early adolescence can give way to the enormous eloquence of the
poetry, diaries and songs of later teenagehood. The most beautiful pieces of communication
humanity has ever produced have largely been the work of people who couldn’t find anyone
in the vicinity they could talk to. And lastly, the sense that one is different from other
people, though it may be searingly problematic at the time, represents a critical moment
when a new generation starts to probe at and selectively improve upon the existing order.
To be 16 and find everything perfect as it is would be a terrifyingly sterile position to adopt.
A refusal to accept the folly, error and evil of the world is a precondition of later achievement.
There really seems no alternative but to be miserable in mid-adolescence if one is to
stand any chance of making a go of the rest of one’s life. Another key realisation of
adolescence is that one hates one’s parents. Yet it is truly an enormous tribute to the
love and care of parents if their teenage children turn around and tell them at the
top of their voice that they loathe them. It isn’t a sign that something has gone
wrong, it’s evidence that the child knows they are loved. The really worrying teenagers
aren’t those who misbehave around their parents and take out their random misery upon
them, it’s those who are so worried about not being loved, they can’t afford to put
a foot wrong. To develop proper trust in other human beings, it can be deeply important to
be able to test a few examples, to tell them the very worst things one can think of, and
then watch them stick around and forgive one. You have to have few gos at breaking love
to believe it can be solid. And, of course, one’s parents really are rather annoying
in many ways. But that too is an important realisation. We would never leave home and
become parents ourselves if we weren’t at some level compensating for the problems,
mistakes and vices we had first identified in our own parents at fourteen and a half.
Another source of teenage sorrow is how many big questions suddenly fill one’s mind,
not least: what is the point of it all? This questioning too is vital. The sort of questions
that adolescents raise tend to get a bad name, but that is more to do with how they answer
them than with the questions themselves. What is the meaning of life? Why is there suffering?
Why does capitalism not reward people more fairly? Adolescents are natural philosophers.
The true end-point of adolescence is not, as it’s sometimes suggested, that one stops
asking huge questions and gets on with the day to day. It’s that one acquires the resources
and intelligence to build an entire life around the sort of big questions that first obsessed
one at seventeen. Lastly, and most poignantly, teenagers tend to hate themselves. They hate
the way they look, how they speak, the way they come across. It feels like the opposite
of being loved, but in fact, these isolated, self-hating moments are the start of love.
These feelings are what will, one day, be at the bedrock of the ecstasy we’ll feel
in the presence of that rare partner who can accept and desire us back. Tenderness will
mean nothing to us unless we first spent many nights alone crying ourselves to sleep. Nature
appears to have so arranged things that we really can’t get to certain insights without
suffering. The real distinction is between suffering with a purpose and suffering in
vain. For all the horrors of adolescence, one of its glories is that the suffering it
inflicts is largely securely rooted in some of the most crucial developments and realisations
of adulthood. These fascinatingly miserable few years should be celebrated for offering
us suffering at its best.
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