Tag Archives: adolescence

Anti-American

dictionary with letter A

Anti-American (adj): hostile to the interests of the United States; opposed to Americans.

If you will allow me to characterize an entire nation in the context of the growth spurt of an average human being, I would put forth that our country is presently in the midst of a seventeen-year-old, bratty, rebellious snit.

Anyone who’s had children and endured the pangs of adolescence will be familiar with the sneering comment coming from your teenage child: “It’s my life. It’s a free country. And if you love me, you’ll support me in my decisions.”

Honestly, we did not become a great country through finding a contortionist’s trickery to kiss our own ass. Our greatness is punctuated by the times we have discovered the fallacy of our own practices and pursued avenues to build a highway to better understanding.

To arrogantly insist that every suggestion that America might need to make some sort of constructive course correction is an attack against our nation is nothing short of high school insolence.

Here are three things I know about my country, I love about my country, and therefore insist that my country continue:

1. We believe in giving.

The minute we start thinking that we are too generous and therefore should take more, we will become the latest dinosaur.

2. We are a free country and therefore capable of changing our mind to better solutions.

I am sick and tired of having the Constitution presented as a docile, stagnant document. It has so far been amended twenty-seven times, and certainly shall be again.

3. We have stated on paper that we believe “all men are created equal” and that no one is better than anyone else.

Even though we’re catching up with our own high-sounding ideas through a bit of painful implementation, we have taken the bold step of declaring an eternal truth.

As long as these three principles are pursued by my nation, I will applaud and sprout a tear or two when Old Glory comes marching by.

When we retreat from them through cowardice or lethargy, I will be in the front of the protest, demanding we return to our standards … and risk being called anti-American by the lazy and ignorant riff-raff.  

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Adolescence

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAdolescence: (adj) period of time of a young person in the process of developing from a child into an adult

I think we have to make up our minds.

We have to decide if we worship youth, teenage years and schoolhouse memories, or whether we freely admit those years were the terror of our lives, a dangerous time when we were constantly threatening ourselves with mayhem, murder and decaptitation.

Here’s the truth, (I feel I can speak this because I raised six teenage sons.)

There is nothing redeemable about human beings between the ages of twelve and twenty-five.

Now, it’s not that we hate them–and of course,  the human race can’t progress without going through this bizarre transformation. We just can’t project a maturity on them which does not exist, while simultaneously expressing disapproval when they fail to measure up.

Adolescence is a form of insanity.

Although it’s not clinically diagnosed, it is universally accepted by those who have experience in this arena as a struggle to the death to survive the amphitheater of hormones and bad decisions, to escape the gladiatorial battle and become a real citizen.

You may think I’m overstating it, but actually, there’s a much greater danger in understating how the decisions made by young humans, with their limited experience, social consciousness and spiritual insight, are frightening and make me want to crawl under the covers.

For instance, God, for some reason, thought it was funny to give sexual desire to thirteen-year-olds. Even though I am sure there is some humor mingled in to that mix, it also is further complicated by the fact that girls of that age are extraordinarily fertile and able to procreate at an amazing rate which would make rabbits blush.

We also expect them to decide what to do with the rest of their lives, at this season when picking out what they’re going to wear to school seems to stupefy them.

So what is the best thing to do with an adolescent?

1. Treat them as mental patients, without ever letting them know that you’ve privately had them committed.

2. Try to get them to reason out their decisions even though the process may seem a bit befuddling to you.

3. Never assume they’re going to do the right thing and always know the wrong thing will be available–and the amount of pressure they get will determine their level of purity.

4. Never be afraid to converse or confront until you’re satisfied with some sort of mutual conclusion.

Of course, due to space and time, I will not even address how adolescence continues to plague us into our fifties and sixties … if we don’t address the real blemishes in our lives.

Adler, Alfred

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adler, Alfred (1870 – 1937): Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist who disagreed with Freud’s idea that mental illness was caused by sexual conflicts in infancy, arguing that society and culture are significant factors. Adler introduced the concept of the inferiority complex.

Adler just wasn’t sexy.

You see, that’s the problem with humanity. It’s not that I’m a prude and object to sexualizing. Anything as vastly accepted, recognized and universally shared as sex is undoubtedly has across-the-board appeal.

But if you mention Sigmund Freud in front of the psychiatric community thinking that you are being wise and inventive, you might need to be prepared to be ridiculed for your lack of information. Making everything in life about sex is like insisting that pornography is a rite of passage for discovering how to interact with members of the opposite gender.

Adler had two major problems: he took away the sexiness AND he inserted the need to question ourselves on whether we felt inferior.

That last one’s a killer. That’s why people aren’t making movies about Adler, but every once in a while Freud gets stuck in because he gave us license to explore our strangeness and foibles by blaming our mother and father for a lack of warmth which caused us to become perverted.

That’s the difference. Freud gave us somebody to blame. Adler made people take personal responsibility for their own actions, their own culture, their own environment and their own feelings of insecurity.

Honestly, which one would YOU choose?

But somewhere along the line, in order for a society to grow out of being stuck in adolescence, people have to admit that they might just be their own worst problem. Yes, maybe our parents were not very good. After all the position comes with neither a manual nor any natural inclinations, contrary to popular opinion.

What we do at age thirty-five needs to cease to have anything to do with what happened to us at age four. Otherwise, we pass on the impression that everyone in the world is really sick, waiting for a diagnosis to come along and rationalize erratic behavior.

Adler may have had a whole lot more on the ball because he asked people to trace ALL the factors of their lives, and also to consider that taking a back seat to others is a personal decision rather than a permanent position.

Freud, on the other hand, made everything about erogenous zones and how we feel deprived, which caused us to act out as little children.

So we have to STOP being “children in the marketplace”–grow up, forgive the failures of our families, and start allowing ourselves to inhabit a persona which is ours alone and not at the mercy of the indiscretions of others.

Yes, if our society does not grow out of its “teenager phase, ” we will continue to throw tantrums, lie and never get our homework done.

And when the homework is not done, the national need will never be met.