 Today's young people are in a more desperate condition in general. When beauty is lost - at a subliminal level fear begins to build. One of the meanings of the word adolescents involves lescere [Latin]- to nourish. An Irish poet said: "A false sense of security is the only kind there is." As people become more literal and begin to count themselves as a part of one statistical group or another, what's lost is the imagination of being alive in the whole big singing world. If someone can't "fit in", won't fit in, there's a real reason for that. That reason is worth going after. Genius is a timeless thing; it's a matter of creating an opening for it. The beginning of the word authenticity is author; as soon as things become authentic everyone can become an author, a storyteller and maker of their own life. That's the voice I'm after and the whole point of working with youth. |
How did you become interested in working with adolescents? I was raising a few of them and it brought back a lot of experiences and issues that I struggled with growing up. In the course of that I noticed that this generation of young people are in much more dire conditions than we were. It's kind of the reverse of the usual story where the older ones say we had to walk uphill in both directions in bare feet an so on. Today's young people are in a more desperate condition in general. I began to try to work with them a little. What do you see as some of the challenges young people face? In the big picture, there is an upheaval throughout the world in terms of the rapidity of change in all the aspects of culture. Usually, adolescents rebel against tradition; but what they face is changing so fast that they can't rebel against it. They become caught in the flood of change. The old idea is that culture represents the stability and young people propel themselves away from that and in doing so find the essence of themselves. In this case there's nothing to bounce off of, the're just bouncing along with changes in the culture. It's as if they have a double dose of uncertainty. There's something that you said once that I thought was beautiful. I had never though of it that way. You said that in our culture beauty has decreased and fear has increased. Can you explain that? I was noticing the increase of fear, visible in gated communities, the ideas of insurance and protecting oneself. I was thinking the old idea that the world is made of Awe and Terror. I started to imagine it as a balance. If everything seems beautiful, people don't fear as much. When beauty is lost from the aesthetics of buildings and common places are not reassuring to people, at a subliminal level fear begins to build. We wind up living in an atmosphere of fear. One part of that is that we come to fear our own young people, our own children. In family therapy, I see children often carry the affect of the family. Do you think that youth carry the fear for us? Yes. One of the meanings of the word adolescents involves lescere [Latin]- to nourish. I think that young people can't help by absorb the emotional spiritual tone of the culture around them. They absorb this ambient fear and all of the disatisfaction and confusion in the culture. They then act that out. Then, everyone begins to blame them for acting what they can't help but absorb. One more distinction I'd like to point to before we talk about what you actually do with youth and what you did here. You spoke of literalisation of our world. What do you mean by that? It's as if the world is continually being reduced to singular aspects, everything is measured and counted. Of course, right now we're going through the endless counting of votes in which the election becomes a literal thing. Someone might win by one vote, as if that's what counted. When what really counts is the bigger, deeper issues. Literalisation is bringing life down to a single dimension. People begin to speak in single syllable words: "read my lips; no new taxes." I won. Things get literal and simplified. The huge, ongoing issue of social security gets presented as simply financial. An Irish poet said: "A false sense of security is the only kind there is." Literalism is a false sense of measuring, a false sense of security and certainty. I can only hypothesize that when we become more literal, we become less creative. Exactly. The difference is imagination. As people become more literal and begin to count themselves as a part of one statistical group or another, what's lost is the imagination of being alive in the whole big singing world. That, I think is the crux of the problem in the culture. The growth of prisons, for instance indicates a lack of cultural imagination. What type of youth are you usually drawn to work with and what do you actually do in that work? In going into any community to work with youth, I always ask for the ones that are in trouble. First of all it's an attempt to offer them something, for often they've already been excluded alot. But, also there's the idea that they have something to offer. If someone can't "fit in", won't fit in, there's a real reason for that. That reason is worth going after. Think of all the major figures in history who have spent time in jail: Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, on and on. So, the fact that someone doesn't fit doesn't mean that they don't have something to offer. Sometimes, it means exactly that they have something extra-ordinary to offer. On that basis, I always ask for those and then I like to intermix those who are in trouble with those who seem to be doing well. I always feel that we're in a system where each person is a voice of something in the system. Everybody's important. The trick is to find out how each is important and a key to it is voice. Our word mentor comes form the Odyssey. Mentor brings the voice out of the distressed youth. It's one of the oldest, root stories of Western culture. That's what I've become intrigued with: helping and providing opportunities for young people to find the voice that's in themselves. As a number of them living at great risk have said: "I could die much more content having heard my own voice expressed." The second thing part of mentoring is to bring the voice and gifts a young person might have to the community; to make a bridge to bring them back to the community. So, I first work with them in finding their voice and the surprise in the whole thing is that often can be accomplished in a matter of hours. The basis of this business of voice is that each person has a genius, an old North African word that meant spirit of place or the spirit that is there. Each young person has a genius within which has a distinct voice. Under pressure you can often get to the voice more quickly. You now have four hours! People will see young folks acting this way, looking like that and say: "They just want attention." I say. "Yes; and your point is?" They do want attention and it's the genius hidden within them that demands it in one way or another. If you can create circumstances, often a little painful, for that to happen, it will come out creatively. The genius is a timeless thing; it's a matter of creating an opening for it. So, what do you say to them? I tell them a story; that's the oldest thing in the world. In a way, the world is all stories. I tell them a very old story that has at least one young person in it who's also in trouble. Then, I invite them to talk about it. Inevitably, they begin to say what they really feel; how they experience their lives, what their perspective on the world is. Then, a critical moment usually arrives when things get difficult, scary or troubled. Then, the issue becomes- do you really mean this? Are you genuinely interested in hearing what each one of us has to say? Or, is this another trick and we're told to be quiet or someone is thrown out of the room. Thats the critical moment. Regardless of what happens then, you have to figure a way to stick with them, even when they start to give up on themselves. What might show up with the youth at that moment? Someone could be so overwhelmed with the weight or grief of what's going on in their life that they cant talk or won't talk or will only curse or start to disturb everything. Some would prefer to fight with each other rather than express their real feelings. Some create a circumstance so you will throw them out and prove once again that they have no place, that they are rejected entirely. Often they might have offensive behavior? Oh yeah! Or something will suddenly come out of one person thats so shocking or sorrowful that they begin to think that we can't handle it. Then, there's a challenge there to help everyone see that that's what we're there for. You never know what it's going to be. That's the rule. But, there always is that moment. Young people have an increasing talent for sniffing out the inauthentic...and they should, they experience so much that is false. So, there's a moment in which the authentic is trying to be present and it's the job of any adults there, in my opinion, to make sure that it arrives and stays present. The beginning of the word authenticity is author; as soon as things become authentic everyone can become an author, a storyteller and maker of their own life. That's the voice I'm after and the whole point of working with youth. Often, at that moment the real question for the youth is: Can I produce fear in you, because if I produce it in you, then I'm not safe. Can you handle me, handle whatever Im going to bring out? I need someone to be able to do that. We're back to the idea of something stable nearby; so they can struggle through their own instabilities to find this deeper sense of themselves. The challenge is then to the adults- can we be stable enough, not that we don't have our own fears, sorrows. Can we hold it, can we provide a ground on which they can struggle to find their own genius. I often say to adults that when you're raising adolescents, you've got to take many more steps, but they all have to be forward, towards youth, not backwards, not running away. That's great. Too often people are running away from youth these days and leaving them alone with all kinds of electronics, drugs, etc. And, then attacking them for filling in with what was left nearby when everyone ran away. Then what happens, after you the testing period? After that, they begin to quickly and slowly and directly, indirectly to find their own place. They find a place of authenticity in themselves and realize it's alright to be as themselves in this moment. They shift out of peer pressure into its opposite. For now, the pressure is to express my actual self in some way. By then they're writing, trying to express something of what this voice wants to say. I call it "poetry" in a very broad sense. Sometimes, there's youth who can't write for various reasons, everything from physical disabilities to lack of education, dyslexia, many reasons. So, they pair up and one becomes the scribe for the other's voice. Eventually, every voice gets on to paper. What are things you hear them say? One thing that surprises people is that the youth will often divide into those that are angry and more agressive about how they feel hurt or rejected and those who are more sorrowful, even apathetic. There's almost a homicidal / suicidal split. Within those two directions all kinds of voices happen. You hear the raging of kids who have been smacked around or abused and that has put a burning thing in them. If that rage and outrage can be given voice, what comes right behind it are more subtle, more connected, more wounded voices, including asking for help voices. On the other side, you have kids that slip into depressions and apathies and they feel that they can't say anything and often you have to help them to find that first word or first line that has a feeling that connects them. They need encouragement in that direction, come on, bring it out, it will be alright. While the burning ones need to hear: go ahead, get it all out and let's find out what's behind it. Is it gender specific? do you see as much rage with girls as with boys? I think that the ways of expression are different, but there are many young women severely wounded who cannot simply hold it in the way women used to be told to do. Often, it varies more by whether you're in urban or suburban places; where you are in the socio-economic scale. I know that you work a lot in the "inner cities," do you see more rage there? Yes. If I had to make a simple division, I call it the "red fog" and the "white fog." The red fog is the rage that's more evident in the "inner cities" and more evident in young people of color. And, the white fog is more characteristic of surburban, white apathy and depression. Those simplified division can be useful in talking about these things, but once it comes to working with a particular group of kids, all that goes out the window in favor of paying close attention to whats there at the time. Do you have a story that you could share? The voice that they wind up with is sometimes so different from where they start that it's remarkable. My mind goes to the red fog issues and I thought immediately of one kid. I had said that if you can't write, you've never really written or the only thing you have to say is curses and such, well then go ahead. Write as many foul things as you can; curse them out as thoroughly as you can. So, this kid did just that. It was very vicious and horrendous and of course, he insisted that I be the one that read it out loud. Very entertaining, you know; make the adult read all this vile stuff. Well, I did and then that was over. The worst things he could think of had been read and the question was, well, what next? What finally came out of him was a tremendous amount of deep compassion and deep feeling. When we got to the bottom of the story, it turned out that his best friend had been shot and he had never been able to deal with that. And, no one had helped him to deal with it. It was as if he was carrying a corpse around and it was driving him a little crazy. Underneath all the cursing was the exact opposite, a lament for lost friendship and the importance of love. That was very instuctive to me; not to be too afraid of what looks like a simple violent thing. Give the second chance, the third chance to learn what else is there. Do you find that these youth go on to help others? Very good question. There is an instinct to mentoring and Ive been quite surprised by it. You don't have to ask them to do it; they'll do it automatically. It's as if they understand a hidden continuity of people. As soon as they feel that they have some sense of where they are, they immediately want to help the next younger group. It's quite a beautiful thing to see. The second part of that, which many people don't believe at this point is that it is natural for young people to be altruistic. Whether in the the inner cities or in the affluent suburbs; despite how kids act, whether stealing or displaying inherited wealth, those are the circumstances around them. Given the chance they will be altruistic. The real "bottom line" that young people feel that somewhere in themselves are gifts that they are compelled to give. From there they will give and try to help others if they have received some help. What do you think with the youth shooting other youth? Is that simply the first part of the voice, the rage? I think that, yes. In cases like Columbine there's a kind of unbearable rage that has to do with kids rejected and way out on the edge. The society in some kind of schools is not a complete society. There is only one kind of people, the disability youth are not there, those who struggle in various ways are increasingly driven or taken out of the schools. Those who used to be able to hide or mix in better, suddenly become the outcastes. They don't have obvious disbilities, but they become the most outcasted ones and they are not able to deal with that. So, they go on the "net" and find groups that support their thinking and that gives them a connection. Strangely, it gives them a voice; back to the importance of voice. Suddenly, they think they've have the voice of the self-righteous and oppressed. It's a perversion of finding an authentic voice. The antidote is to get to their actual voice. It's evident that they are severely hurt, otherwise they couldn't hurt so many others. Standardized testing misses this whole issue of the unique voice. If it doesn't come out in some way that feels appropriate to that person it is going to come out in very inappropriate ways. There is no in between. There are no "normal kids." There are no standard kids. There are no appropriate kids. There are just kids who with this human issue of a genius inside, the gifts and wounds which they happen to be carrying. If space isn't made for that then everybody eventually gets to feel the pain. top |
Conversation with Michael Meade