Summertime for our family is a time for the gathering of adult siblings from far and wide, most of us with offspring in their teens and early twenties. It’s been a beautiful time, renting out two houses on a lake in southern Wisconsin, hanging out with each other on the water and shore.
I try to remind myself of the two major paths of energy and information flow of the mind, one a conduit and the other a constructor. A just-finished manuscript rests on this computer, waiting for constructive attention, emails come in and urge me to attend to this or that issue. I could easily give in to the need for this construction; but instead I try to remind myself that vacation time, “time-off”, is as much a time-in as a time to connect, to become a conduit of the flow of this experience right here that fills my senses.
I jump on a pontoon boat with my teen nieces, take sunset rides on a wave runner with my own two, now in their twenties, and enjoy seeing grandma drive her grandkids around the lake in a speedboat. On the dock of our house, I stand watch over one niece splashing in the lake beyond the dock: “Uncle Dan, you don’t need to watch me, I’m twenty! And the water is only four feet deep!”
“Don’t worry,” I assure her, “no one should swim alone in any depth of water…and besides, I like watching you and the water and the sunset.” And there I stood, a conduit for the experience, letting the flow of the rainbow of colors exploding in the sky and ripples of the water, the sounds of waves gently rubbing the deck, the caress of the breeze against my brow, the scent of pines nearby.
And then I let the constructor have space too. Why not? Being present for life isn’t the same as only being in the flow of sensory experience. We can embrace the totality of our minds—conduit and constructor—to be present for whatever arises. She swims in the water, and I let my conceptual mind swim with ideas. I remember when she, and my own son and daughter, were infants and toddlers, crawling and waddling on the sands along these same waters. I could sense their excitement as elementary and middle school kids to dance around their grandpa on his seventy-fifth birthday here too; and then just last year, as adolescents heavy with the sadness of gathering just a few miles away for his funeral.
Life.
The six adolescents here are in the middle of it all. Not quite adults, not quite children, I watch them here in the boldness of their lives, facing choices of their lives for the first time: What should I do? Who should I connect to? Why am I here? Who am I? Sometimes deep, sometimes goofy, our conversations range from the mundane to the profound. Last night we gathered at a Karaoke bar and sang our hearts out, all fifteen of us, till the joint closed.
People often think of adolescence as a time to rush through, something that is a dread and filled with “craziness” as these youth are “driven mad with hormones” and need to push away from all adults. These are the common myths of our modern culture about this period between childhood dependence and adult responsibility. My constructive mind reminds me that I’ll be doing a new set of talks on adolescence, for teens and those in their twenties, as well as for the adults who care for them—parents, grandparents, teachers, therapists and coaches. When the paperback version of Brainstorm is released early next month, there may be a whole new set of opportunities to remind adolescence, and adults, that these common myths are not only wrong, they are often destructive. And I see in these adolescents here how wrong those mistaken views are.
When we realize that in fact recent research reveals that the remodeling of the adolescent brain is a necessary pruning and myelination that increase integration in the adolescent well into the mid to late twenties, we realize that what we think and how we use our minds during this period of life can actually shape the outcome of brain development. And what we think as adults about these individuals will shape what they believe about themselves. In this last year and half since the hardcover was released, it has been one of the most rewarding experiences for me as therapist, educator, author, and dad, to hear from not only adults, but especially from the adolescents themselves how empowering it is to realize that adolescents 1) can shape their own developmental course; 2) are not powerless in the face of false notions of “raging hormones” (after all, what could you do with that—give those molecules angermanagement training?); 3) can have a selective set of adults in their lives to support their journeys; and 4) don’t have to rush through this period and “hope to just get through it alive”, but rather can relish this time and optimize their developmental outcome. I filled the book with exercises that help promote optimal brain growth and explain how to use these practices in the busy, everyday lives for adolescents.
When I have received emails about the acronym of the essence of adolescence, a deep warmth fills my body: ESSENCE is the essence of this period.
- ES: Emotional Spark—a time of great vitality and passion that can be cultivated well, instead of being seen as only moodiness and irritability.
- SE: Social Engagement—a time of great importance of the connections to others, a deep relationality that is beyond the vulnerability to peer pressure making adolescents—or any of us—be at risk of giving up morals for membership to a larger group.
- Novelty-seeking: The courage to move beyond the status quo and try out something new. Yes, risk-taking is real in adolescence, not just because of impulsivity in early adolescence, but a drive by dopamine shifts of the reward system of the brain and a kind of cognition called by researchers “hyper-rational thinking”, each of which make dangerous behaviors a real aspect of this time period. Developing an “inner compass” can provide the foundations to minimize such dangers during this time of life.
- Creative Exploration: Having thecreativity to innovate and conceive of how the world could be, not just perceiving how it is. Adults tend to call this “adolescent rebellion” and miss the opportunity to create systems in schools and society that support this drive toward creating a new world. In fact, most of the innovations of science and technology, art and music, come from adolescent minds!
The water laps on this spring-fed lake, as it has for thousands of years. Our century or so of life here in these bodies is an opportunity to conceive of and then construct a healthier world. I look at my son and daughter, my nieces and nephews, listen to the music they are singing right here in the next room, see them painting over there on the porch, soak in the laughterof another pair outside. Life is a passing of these moments, I know, ones we cannot hold onto. Their grandpa would have smiled to be here, and I smile now filling my mind with his memory. But if it is true that our conscious minds can learn to embrace the here-and-now, lift it out of the pain of life’s challenges for all of us, perhaps we can acknowledge and cultivate the essence of a vital life for all of us. In fact one of the startling discoveries of exploring this important period of life is that the ESSENCE of adolescence is also the key way to keep our brains vital and growing well throughout the lifespan! That’s something we call can embrace, no matter where we are along this spectrum of life. These reflections can remind us to pause and soak in the privilege of this life and to enjoy our ESSENCE!
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