Life is up and down. Last week we had three rock climbing days which took me back to our days living in the mountains in Nelson, BC, where we had a half dozen different crags within half an hour of home and two massive mountain ranges. In Australia, climbing is much more spread out, and climbers mistrusted by government, media, the public, sometimes even each other. The pioneer spirit in Australia with it’s acceptance of risk died out a long time ago replaced by increasingly left wing authoritarian governments who behave more like nannies (hence the term “nanny state”) than legitimate governing bodies. Booze and junk food however, remain cheap and available, although I would argue the risk from both of those well surpasses the risk from outdoor activities.
Enough of politics, we’ve been deep in the woods this week and something about carrying heavy packs around and engaging in somewhat sketchy activities gives some clarity of mind. If you believe the media, not something I do as a rule, mental health issues are increasing rapidly in Australia’s youth. Of course, it’s not just Australia, other western countries are experiencing the same phenomenom. It is difficult to know what to make of this as mental health is neither a binary nor a fixed and immutable diagnosis. There are no X-rays, blood tests or scans that can accurately diagnose a mental health issue, instead, diagnosis relies on self report and – what is essentially – checklists from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR). There is both conflict of interest (all those mental health counsellors need to be paid and they only get paid if they can document some kind of official diagnosis) and expansion of disorders. The two really go hand in hand. The more disorders that can be diagnosed the bigger the client base and the more money that can be made. I’m not suggesting that mental health counsellors are out to fleece a vulnerable population but the only people who ignore the profit motive are people who just aren’t very smart.
Mental health issues do seem to be everywhere even in the world of climbing. And increasingly, the people who feel they have mental health issues are younger folk. They have anxiety, dysphoria, depression or panic attacks, or maybe they are neurodivergent or believe themselves to be on the spectrum. For example, I just listened to a climbing podcast where the guest spoke for an entire hour about how she felt shame (about various and sundry things) and believed she did not fit in. These feelings are so overwhelming that this young lass walks home from a climbing day crying. This is not normal and not what I remember from my own youth. And, it’s downright sad. What should be a joyous experience is instead a descent into an abyss of dark feelings. It’s almost like young people need to learn that feelings are fleeting, changeable, unreliable and, in the end, within our own control. We are not our feelings.
Then there is the increasing fragmentation into smaller and smaller tribal groups. The ultimate fragmentation is, of course, the ever expanding categories of gender (or probably more accurately sexuality) which has now reached 11 with an additional + sign in case anymore come up (2SLGBTQQIA+). People in these communities often feel like they don’t fit in. Just like the female climber who thinks she does not fit in, this causes enormous distress.
Perhaps it’s the passage of time, perhaps it is differing expectations but the reality is, none of us fit in. I guess when you officially hit old age and you are looking back over half a hundred years of life, you realise that you didn’t fit in as an adolescent, you didn’t fit in as a young adult and you don’t fit in as an older person. None of us fit in completely because we are all unique and different and no amount of increasingly microscopic division into discrepant tribes improves that. Diversity is the magic of human existence and it is what makes life such an endlessly engaging and fascinating experience.
Young people, I think, have been given the wrong expectations. Somehow they all expect to find a magic tribe or secret niche where everyone lives in complete harmony with the same dreams, aspirations, beliefs and normative values but this place simply does not exist. The more we divide ourselves into incrementally smaller and smaller identity groups the more alone we feel and the smaller and smaller our zone of comfort becomes. This is no way to live this one glorious and precious life that has been granted to you. No-one is their feelings and the more focus is put on feelings the more obsessed, depressed, neurotic and anxious one becomes. There is tremendous freedom in simply being, simply acting, taking the focus off feelings and putting it on actions, looking for commonalities instead of differences, realising that one thing that binds all humans together is that none of us fit in.
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