Shed the Stress

This week, I read an article about self-harm and the reasons behind it. The reasons varied and pretty much included most things teenagers will go through. However, one of those reasons stuck out to me and seemed interesting. Anxiety and stress were listed as one of the highest causes, and I began to think about how our culture views stress.

Oddly enough, I think we're proud of our stress.

Think about when someone is asked how they're doing - typically they respond, "Man, I'm just so busy." We wear it like a ribbon. It's become our identity. Interestingly enough, we bring the stress onto ourselves with things that aren't needed. After all, what teenage kid died from not playing soccer or not getting a test grade high enough?

We don't want our teens to be depressed and hurt themselves, but maybe almost as much, we don't want them to fail.

Cue the reason for this blog - we need to teach our youth that failure is not the worst thing they can experience. In fact, I fear we are in for a rough few decades because we've taught youth that they must get things right the first time around and as a result, we don't dwell and learn from our mistakes. We sweep them under the rug and pretend they never happened. Not only so, but we convince our youth by our expectations that busyness is good. Spoiler alert - busyness, as I'm defining it here, is not Godly.

So how do we proceed? We must communicate to our youth that there are many things more important than their homework, their sports activities, their resumés and the college they get accepted to. Some of these things would include their self-worth, their relationship with God, their compassion, and their love for others.

Personally, I think when we put these things first, the other things come. 

What are we teaching our youth about 'success?'

When will we realize the situation we've put them in - how many more have to cut to shed the stress before we change? I'm afraid of the answer.

Bibliography

"Why Do People Self-harm? - TheSite.org." TheSiteorg. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.