On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade looks at two contemporary crises involving young people through the lens of rites of passage. One crisis involves the alarming increase in both the numbers of youth who consider suicide and those actually taking their own lives. Teens and young adults across the country report growing levels of sadness, loneliness and hopelessness with youth of color and LGBTQ+ youth increasingly being severely affected.

Young people have no choice but to grow up in the collective atmosphere of their culture. At this point in time that means to be more exposed to extreme cultural conflicts as well as the raw emotions and extreme edges of human nature. The other crisis stems from troubling and tragic forces that currently tear at the heart of humanity and form the background for student protests erupting on college campuses.

Throughout the world it is typical to find young people at the forefront of movements demanding societal changes. At the same time, the more conservative elements of a society tend to overreact when students and young adults inevitably seek to respond to issues of mass violence, injustice and needless death and destruction. It is natural for youthful aspirations to raise and defend the highest ideals of humanity, especially in the face of inhumane forces and practices. At the same time, modern cultures often lack the presence of genuine elders who can combine a true passion for human ideals with the wisdom to find ways of healing and uniting people in the midst of cultural crises.

Although coming of age has come to mean being legally recognized as an adult, traditional rites of passage involved coming upon that which is ageless, timeless and enduring in human life. To truly come of age, especially in a time of undeniable global crises, means to experience both the dreams of what life might be and the agonies that currently plague so many people on earth. The old idea was that the specific struggles of youth become the twists of fate through which they find seeds of meaning and purpose in their own lives, while also trying to face and change the dilemmas and tragedies that afflict their community or society.

We live in hard times when the tendency to be hard-minded, hard-hearted can intensify in reaction to the pressures of great uncertainty about the future of humanity as well as the earth itself. Modern societies tend to see the time of youth as a phase that young people should naturally outgrow. Traditional cultures imagined that the transition from childhood involves a radical transformation that requires support and guidance. The idea was that a culture becomes remade through the dreams of youth and the wisdom of engaged and caring mentors and elders who remain in touch with the passions and ideals they first experienced in youth.

Living amidst the cascade of crises that continually upend the contemporary world is like entering a radical rite of passage that is well underway, but that remains mostly unconscious. At this critical time, healing and renewal is essential on most levels of life and means facing chaos and uncertainty and accepting the need to struggle with the core issues of meaning and justice and the rights of all people to be able to live meaningfully.

The pressure of a fearfully divided and unreconciled world falls like a weight upon young people who have no choice but to try to grow in an atmosphere of conflict and chaos. Whether that causes them to consider taking their own life or risk themselves by rising up and insisting upon the deepest values of humanity, their anguish and longings can only be rejected and denied at the cost of an even darker future. When the dark times come, it is both the eternal youth carrying the dream of life and the wise old sage secretly dwelling in each heart that are trying to be found and need to be brought together for healing and renewal on earth to be possible again.