Fighting pressures in the modern world for young people

 

Young people these days have huge pressures to succeed younger. This is because the image of success is changing from the old couple cruising on a boat to beautiful young people with flawless complexion, silky hair, in stunning fashion, bathing in riches, entourage and media attention. This is the ‘OMG they have everything syndrome’ and young people today grow up consuming and practising it. These days it is important to look cool, party hard, study hard, get rich and find happiness all at the same time. For many people born after 1985, it is no longer good enough to succeed when they are in their 50s because,

            “Justin Bieber is 16 and he is earning millions”
            “Rafael Nadal is 24 and he is earning tens of millions”
            “Mark Zuckerberg is the richest young person in the world with billions of dollars”.

(Image source: yahoo.com)   

This growing pressure for young people to succeed earlier in life is causing them to stress out in high school, primary school and very soon even preschool! These days, ‘tiger moms’ and ‘tiger dads’ are forcing their children to be almost geniuses at everything. Children are learning all sorts of extra-curricular activities so they can become little Mozarts, Federers and Emma Watsons but they are also expected to excel in classes, ace exams and get scholarships.

And it doesn’t stop there. Young people have their own pressures to also be popular. I know people that wake up to directly check their emails and facebook account from a bedside laptop; eat breakfast while watching TV and texting friends; play with their smart phones on the train ride to school while browsing the internet at the same time studying notes for an exam; get to school and continually text, check facebook and twitter to update their status; organise lunch dates, coffee dates and the night out. After school there can be two or three parties and engagements to go to and the day doesn’t finish until at least 1 or 2 in the morning. After getting home get onto facebook again to add new friends from today because having 100 friends is no longer popular when everyone else has at least 300!

Although these stressful lifestyles can seem attractive, fun or even impressive for many young people, what people usually don’t see is the problems that lie ahead. The cost of these highly pressured lifestyles is that our mind and body get burnt out quicker. Depression, anorexia, obsessive compulsive disorders, obesity, insomnia are few of the psychological disorders that plague young people in modern societies. Therefore to truly love ourselves and learn to care for others we need to learn how to find a balance in our stressful lifestyles, to tune our minds away from modern-day pressures and illnesses.

In Buddhism there are three key practices essential for mental health. The first practice is meditation, second, the practice of compassion and third, the practice of impermanence. These three practices are of course not limited to Buddhists, in fact similar ideas can be found across all religions and also in clinical treatments. It is important to realise that similar to the way we shower every day to get rid of building dirt, protecting our strong, beautiful and focused minds need every day attention. This constant attention to the way we act, speak and even think is called ‘practice’.

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Meditation is almost known to everyone yet not many practise it seriously. For those that do practise meditation many often miss the point of meditation and think it is only for relaxation. Meditation is for the training of the mind, not too dissimilar to the idea of going to the gym for the mind. The training includes been able to understand how the mind works, how it likes to behave and learn how to work with it so capacity can be built. We often don’t think of training our mind like we train our hands and feet and we almost never see mind training as we think of weight training. In fact there are many parallels.

We exercise and lift weights to build muscle mass, in the same way we meditate to build mental mass. As human beings we have physical as well as mental bodies, both are interconnected and integral to our health and happiness. We need to think healthy to be healthy as much as the other way round. Therefore learning how to meditate to tune our minds to a beautiful, healthy and loving state is important for the training. To do that Buddhists meditate on particular positive concepts; away from egotistic thinking and away from the five poisons of the mind that can lead to mental afflictions and suffering – greed, anger, ignorance, arrogance and doubt.

One of these positive concepts is compassion, to help the mind increase in loving wholesome thoughts and increase our capacity to embrace and unify our experiences. Compassion is an immensely powerful thought that can send an explosion of positive energy through our body and to people around us. The Theravada Buddhists term this energy - ‘Metta’ which means loving kindness and the Mahayana Buddhist call this ‘Bodhicitta’; ‘Bodhi’ meaning enlightenment, ‘citta’ meaning heart of mind which broadly suggests that compassion is the mind of enlightened beings. The practice of compassion is the most important thing in our growing apathetic modern society. When people live without regard to their neighbours, walls are built between people that can lead to misunderstandings, isolation, segregation, envy, hatred and even wars. Compassion is a key practice that reminds us that what we do can have direct effect on other people’s wellbeing. Therefore we need to be careful in our decisions, actions and speech so that as we strive towards success, people around us are loved and cared for and not exploited or neglected.

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Another key concept for meditation is impermanence; this is how Buddhists protect themselves against modern-day stress. To meditate on impermanence is to not only understand it but embody it. Through the practice of impermanence we live with the fact of our temporary existence. We also accept that nothing is going to last forever, not our family, friends, job or anything we believe is secure.
Although we all know impermanence but not many of us can accept it. In fact our human habit is to work against impermanence and to form attachments to things that are ultimately going to be detached. If we can accept that our bodies will age, our vitality will fade, our beauty won’t last as we accept the fact that an apple will always fall towards the earth then the level of emotional suffering will significantly decrease. Meditating on impermanence takes time because it is overturning strong habits that could have been developed in our minds for over 10, 20 years or even longer. It is even harder to practise it in reality especially for those that already have many possessions and attachments.
“How can I not be attached to my beautiful car?”
“How can I not be attached to my family?”
“How can I not be attached to my girlfriend?”

The practice of impermanence is ultimately to live in the moment and love without unnecessary attachments, appreciate and cherish without unnecessary needs for possession and be happy without the unnecessary temptation to be always happy. Stress and frustration does not come from love and appreciation but from the attachment to things that are impermanent and wanting to control what are uncontrollable. Meditating on compassion and impermanence is living it out as a philosophy; so what we do, say and think are geared towards the happiness of others as well as ourselves.

In conclusion, as a young person living in the modern world there are pressures that cannot be deflected or avoided and as we grow older these pressures can only grow on us with increasing responsibilities from work and family. Therefore the key is to learn how to deal with it in a positive way. Meditation, compassion and impermanence are three powerful practices that counter stressful life patterns to offer balance through generating calmness, loving kindness and a healthy level of detachment in our minds. So as we pick up pressures and stress every day we are also equipped with the knowledge of how to let them go, resolve them or transform them into positive attitudes.

To borrow a Buddhist parable to finish: “once there was a person afraid to leave his home fearing that the stones and chips on the roads will cut the sole of his bare feet. He explained his problem to a wise monk and described how he wished the roads were lined with soft leather for him to walk on. The monk learning of his problem instead suggested, ‘why don’t you wear shoes made out of soft leather then wherever you walk it is like walking on a ground of soft leather!’”. We cannot always change our environments to suit ourselves or expect others to smooth out our journeys in life for us, but what we can do is adjust our own minds and attitudes so we are protected from the unnecessary frustrations and anxieties that can rise from a world of constant change and challenges.