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I have no frilly or well-written introduction for what is on my mind today. I will just come right out with it. Our world is way too focused on problems and false solutions.
We have become so dependent on instant gratification that every facet of our lives is now governed by that desire to immediately resolve our problems, even when time and the natural course of the world is often the best solution.
Take, for example, a story I recently read in a medical journal. A young mother became sleep deprived while working full-time and constantly being kept up while caring for her dying grandmother. One day, she had to abruptly find a change for her child's daycare and the resulting anxiety left her in the emergency room. A quick assessment was done and she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, admitted to the psychiatric ward, and put on a psychiatric medication. Over the next year, her friends left her, her money disappeared, and her marriage crumbled. Furthermore, she developed an eye problem that seriously threatened her vision due to taking a medication for a disorder she did not have.
According to medical statistics, one half of Americans are given a psychiatric label in their lives.
Your young child may qualify for Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, meaning "temper outbursts that are grossly out of proportion in intensity or duration to the situation" that occur two or three times a week. There is little to no research to this diagnosis. No science behind it. Yet, you can bet new drugs will soon be there to combat this dangerous mental disorder. I openly admit that growing up, I had Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, or DMDD. Yep, as a child who did not fully understand how the world worked, I often became frustrated and had outbursts far out of proportion to the situation. When something I liked and was mine was taken from me and I did not know where it went or if it would come back, my natural reaction, as is most children's, was to yell, scream, kick, and cry. But I was left to learn life, and eventually, the day came that I understood this world better, and I no longer yelled, screamed, kicked, and cried. I used my knowledge to remedy the situation to diffuse my anger. Had I been put on a medication that would attempt to control my body, the natural growth and inner workings of my body would have been altered and my natural progression as a human being would have ceased.
Therein lies the real mental problem of this world.
But mental problems, though a significant problem we could discuss all day, are only a subtopic of my main concern. My main concern right now is how everyone, myself included, sometimes feel the need to try to fix everything, even when it is not broken. We try to fix ourselves when we feel we are over or underweight or have self-proclaimed defects. We try to fix our friends when they say they had a hard day or are struggling through a problem. Let me stop and address that one. Let me be blunt:
LIFE IS DIFFICULT. IT WAS MEANT TO BE DIFFICULT. WE ARE MEANT TO STRUGGLE, TO BE PUSHED TO OUR LIMITS, TO FEEL PAIN, SORROW, AND TEMPTATION.
These things are not bad, but we seem to expect that every day will be easy and that we deserve peaceful days with no difficulties. Then, when we get hit hard with a trial, we are caught off guard and our stress levels spike and our anxiety kicks in and it goes downhill real quick.
I am not saying expect a terrible day, but be prepared, morally, emotionally, and spiritually, for the struggles that are coming, because I can guarantee they will come. Be a friend and be there to support someone through these struggles, but do not try to fix them. Doing so will almost surely result in either making the problem worse, annoying the person you are trying to help, or will rob the person the chance to learn and grow as they defeat that challenge. Be a support beam, not the whole bridge.
My main point is this: focus less on trying to fix all your problems and refocus your attention on being prepared for the road ahead. As you become the person who is fully prepared for every good and bad situation, you will find that many of your problems will already be on the way out of your life.
We have become so dependent on instant gratification that every facet of our lives is now governed by that desire to immediately resolve our problems, even when time and the natural course of the world is often the best solution.
Take, for example, a story I recently read in a medical journal. A young mother became sleep deprived while working full-time and constantly being kept up while caring for her dying grandmother. One day, she had to abruptly find a change for her child's daycare and the resulting anxiety left her in the emergency room. A quick assessment was done and she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, admitted to the psychiatric ward, and put on a psychiatric medication. Over the next year, her friends left her, her money disappeared, and her marriage crumbled. Furthermore, she developed an eye problem that seriously threatened her vision due to taking a medication for a disorder she did not have.
According to medical statistics, one half of Americans are given a psychiatric label in their lives.
Your young child may qualify for Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, meaning "temper outbursts that are grossly out of proportion in intensity or duration to the situation" that occur two or three times a week. There is little to no research to this diagnosis. No science behind it. Yet, you can bet new drugs will soon be there to combat this dangerous mental disorder. I openly admit that growing up, I had Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, or DMDD. Yep, as a child who did not fully understand how the world worked, I often became frustrated and had outbursts far out of proportion to the situation. When something I liked and was mine was taken from me and I did not know where it went or if it would come back, my natural reaction, as is most children's, was to yell, scream, kick, and cry. But I was left to learn life, and eventually, the day came that I understood this world better, and I no longer yelled, screamed, kicked, and cried. I used my knowledge to remedy the situation to diffuse my anger. Had I been put on a medication that would attempt to control my body, the natural growth and inner workings of my body would have been altered and my natural progression as a human being would have ceased.
Therein lies the real mental problem of this world.
But mental problems, though a significant problem we could discuss all day, are only a subtopic of my main concern. My main concern right now is how everyone, myself included, sometimes feel the need to try to fix everything, even when it is not broken. We try to fix ourselves when we feel we are over or underweight or have self-proclaimed defects. We try to fix our friends when they say they had a hard day or are struggling through a problem. Let me stop and address that one. Let me be blunt:
LIFE IS DIFFICULT. IT WAS MEANT TO BE DIFFICULT. WE ARE MEANT TO STRUGGLE, TO BE PUSHED TO OUR LIMITS, TO FEEL PAIN, SORROW, AND TEMPTATION.
These things are not bad, but we seem to expect that every day will be easy and that we deserve peaceful days with no difficulties. Then, when we get hit hard with a trial, we are caught off guard and our stress levels spike and our anxiety kicks in and it goes downhill real quick.
I am not saying expect a terrible day, but be prepared, morally, emotionally, and spiritually, for the struggles that are coming, because I can guarantee they will come. Be a friend and be there to support someone through these struggles, but do not try to fix them. Doing so will almost surely result in either making the problem worse, annoying the person you are trying to help, or will rob the person the chance to learn and grow as they defeat that challenge. Be a support beam, not the whole bridge.
My main point is this: focus less on trying to fix all your problems and refocus your attention on being prepared for the road ahead. As you become the person who is fully prepared for every good and bad situation, you will find that many of your problems will already be on the way out of your life.