The striving for perfection, it seems, is killing us…

The idea that perfection is possible followed by the inevitable struggle to get there is placing enormous pressure on many Australians. Moments of perfection are possible but perfection as a manner of living is a concept that feeds distress, anxiety and chronic disappointment.

In 1974 three family therapists Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and Richard Fisch wrote an excellent book Change: Principles of problem formation and Problem Resolution.

They hypothesised that the search for perfection causes much distress which impacts our decision making, feeds flawed logic and inevitably our erodes our mental health. Given they wrote this 51 years ago it seems to me their hypothesis was absolutely correct and we’re reaching some sort of climax where the ways in which we are living our lives, in the west, is no longer sustainable. Consequently things just seem to be getting crazier and crazier.

Very regularly, in the media, there are concerns around what our youth are getting up to. Whether it’s youth crime, mental health, or gaming addictions, their dietary habits the list goes on. I find it interesting that youth distress is so intensely focused upon. My hypothesis is it’s a way of avoiding looking at what the adults are doing. Not just their parents but politicians, teachers, coaches, influencers and everyone else that is in their orbit.

If we think of adolescence as the life stage in which we start to navigate our transition from childhood to adult hood, I think adolescent behaviour becomes a sort of mirror of the world in which we all inhabit. There is a weird dichotomy of messaging happening. On the one hand there is climate change and the future is looking a bit glum. Whether you agree with it being a human created phenomenon or a natural environmental process it’s becoming increasingly difficult to say ‘nothing is going wrong with our climate.’

Even a four year old can work out that on a hot day it’s definitely cooler walking under trees compared to a concreted, canopy-less footpath. At this incredibly simplistic level, to deny just that one variable of chopping down many trees is contributing to increasing the global temperature, is the ultimate act of blindness. We must all carry an existential knowing, which is often denied, but maybe expressed via the distress of our youth.

Whilst the majority of adults more or less carry on in much the same way working for a future for their offspring, doing everything to keep them safe but…

This is an incredibly complex situation we have ended up in and the absence of leadership from the adults to steer a path forward for not only ourselves but for future generations is creating a powerless emotional escalation. Our youth feel this.They also watch the solutions which are being expressed via by many countries through voting for extremist governments who offer simplistic solutions. I feel very proud that here in Australia in our last federal election we turned towards the left rather than the climate denying right.

I am heart broken that the solution has become the problem. In the West we enjoy a standard of living, I believe, never experienced before in such large numbers. To let it go is something I don’t want to face. The economic solution of growth has been wonderful but how do we stop and say enough. There is easily accessible leadership to guide us with this. Although I have noticed AUSNET my electricity supplier last summer sent out messages warning us to expect interruptions to supply. Is this what we need – gradual warnings of the unsustainable.

In their own way I think this is what our adolescents are doing; it’s not clearly articulated but their anxieties, depression, addictions, criminal activity are a message spotlighting our shared helplessness, and our pathetic attempts to fix it.

As individuals we’re just left with the slogan Think globally, Act locally – the origins of this famous phrase is unknown but wikipedia say its widely attributed to David Brower who founded Friends of the Earth in 1969. This can help us feel less powerless whilst those who could be making the hard decisions dilly dally. It would take a very skilled politician and courageous politician to guide us away from growth as the economic ideal. I hope we can do it before Mother Nature deals us a fatal blow. The distress levels of our youth are our barometer

A Cape Barron Goose protecting her young