"I was so young - I didn't know what it meant to be hurt and then to hurt."
-- Rites of Spring
At the time of acute self-consciousness at the birth of adulthood, when the
soul is still innocent and open, has not been hardened, and the world is a
big apple with possibilities that are seemingly limitless, and relationships
can seem to be so perfect and so easily perfect, and the soul has been just
awakened to the intense sense of personhood, self-hood, and asks (for the
first and sometimes only time in one's life) the question of who he is and
why he's here, the soul is wide open and seeks to go beyond itself. The
person feels deeply and intensely, having not yet learned to block and hide
these feelings which later prove too painful, and he longs to share this
feeling, this self-awareness, this itensity, this pain with others and to feel
what others feel, especially those who are going through the same thing.
Everything is poured out freely, sometimes too freely, and there is no
attempt to guard one's inner world from being trampled on. The child who
has never been hit by a car, if he is not told of the dangers, will have no
fear of walking into a busy street.
However, when the person gets older, as time passes, the perfect "soul-
mate" relationships which began so intensely, like a wonderous blossoming
flower, become disappointing because there was nothing higher to hold
them together; and the seemingly endless possibilities which present
themselves in youth become smaller, one possibility closing itself off after
another once one goes further on a certain path ( for each person can only
take one path at a time). And then occurs what has formerly been feared
and rejected - a layer forms on top of the raw person, a protective coating;
and it cannot be helped, for pure vunerability is too painful.
All this explains why youth of today fear so much to get old, why they will
do anything to prevent it. Many young people, even if they have exposed
themselves to rottenness in their search for reality and intensity, if they
get out of it in time, are still good, innocent kids, because in a backwards
and self-contradictory way, they have been striving to preserve innocence.
This also explains why the lyrics of many contemporary musicians, when
they are young and first start out, are so poignant and direct, while the
later lyrics of the same people become increasingly obscure, to the point
that those listeners who have practically lived on the earlier songs can get
less and less from the later ones.
(ATTEMPT AT AN ANSWER)
AT THE TIME of acute self-consciousness and the awareness of the eternal
question "Why," the person must be able to direct that self-awareness and
painful yearning to something higher than himself - to God, Who became
flesh and suffered as we do. It is not enough to pour this painful yearning
out to another person - that may help for a time, but it is not enough for
eternity. The human soul seeks perfection, and there is nothing perfect
except God. Other human beings, even if they seem perfect at first, always
turn out to be imperfect, and that can be a great source of disillusionment
to idealistic youth. A human being can be a vehicle to reach the end (God),
and almost always such a human being is needed, but that person cannot
be seen as an end in himself. However, in our post-modern age, when youth
have been denied a knowledge of God, the perfection is usually at first
sought in one or (usually) several human beings, or in unworthy lesser
vehicles such as wealth, beauty, or fame. Again, one must turn one's
painful feelings of self-knowledge and longing to go outside oneself - to
God, for only He has the infinite love to meet them. We know God through
this very pain. "Remembrance of God is pain of heart endured in the spirit
of devotion, but he who forgets God becomes self-indulgent and thus
insensitive." - Mark the Ascetic. "No one achieved anything without pain
of heart." - Elders Barsinuphius and John.
The inward pain and intensity experienced in adolescence is not only
good, but is even vital for the future development of the soul, its drawing
closer to God. It is a moment of truth, and that is why it is so important that
these strong feelings - that "all or nothing", "I won't settle for second-
best" feeling of God-given youthful idealism - be quickly channeled to Him
who is not "second-best", who is the Ultimate. If this would happen, more
youth of today would turn to monasticism - which is the "all or nothing"
life, not settling for second-best, but giving up everything for a higher
end: the Kingdom not of this world. But there must be strength and
backbone in young people to keep alive the flame of their idealistic
yearning when all kinds of worldly tares attempt to choke out the newly
sprouted seeds.
If one channels one's pain, self-awareness, etc., upwards, there is
possibility for endless growth in the spirit. However, if one keeps it
flowing on a horizontal level it will lead to stagnation, despair, or selling
out. Even if one can keep it going, always trying to be intense and real, if
there is nothing else than that, he will just keep going around and around
in circles, not getting anywhere. Life cannot be imbued with meaning
simply by the attempt to live it intensely. Being intense and "having a real
emotion" is not the ultimate answer - it is a partial answer, for it is only a
means and not an end. The answer - the Truth - is God who was nailed to
the Cross, to whom may the youth of today turn in their pain of heart - so
that they will grow up not just into boring worldly adults but into Saints,
growing into the likeness of God, and will continue growing not just into
middle or old age, but throughout eternity, all the while still preserving
their innocence and childlikeness.
All popular attempts not to sell out to the jaded "adult" world have failed,
because they are still part of the one big sell-out: the sell-out of man to this
world, and the abandonment of the radically otherworldly revelation of the
Crucified God for the sake of worldly Christianity, false spiritual paths,
materialism, hedonism, or overt nihilism.
In the words of monk Seraphim Rose, a misfit in the modern world who
went through years of living hell before finding the way out: "Christ is the
only exit from this world. All other exits - sexual rapture, political utopia,
economic independence - are but blind alleys in which rot the corpses of
the many who have tried them...."
source: http://www.stinnocent.com/seraphim/dtw/dtw1/pain.txt
-Monk Damascene Christensen
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