Continued from last week
Emotional Maturity is Vital
Most people in the modern age no longer base decisions and actions on solid moral values. They have been programmed to act according to their feelings. Very few are any longer taught that they must learn to control their emotions.
A well-known singer once recorded what became a famous song, titled “Feelings.” My father enjoyed this particular tune, and I came to enjoy it as well. Looking back, it became, in a sense, prophetic of our entire age—and this age has had an impact on you, and it will directly affect how and with whom you form relationships in your life.
This has been called the age of “feel good.” Most people now make decisions, come to conclusions or react in given situations based almost exclusively on how things feel to them. For more than a generation, most human beings have become subtly conditioned—by education, pop psychology and society—to listen to, and stay in tune with, their feelings, as a guide to their course of action in any given situation.
Part of this conditioning involves people having been virtually trained to look for and almost exclusively respond to their feelings. They have even been taught to elevate their feelings to the point of almost continually asking themselves how they feel—about almost everything!
This represents an enormous change in the overall way that most people think and react—and view the circumstances in which they find themselves. Dating and courtship are not exceptions, and may have been affected more than most other areas of human activity.
Here is what is different—what has changed today. The vast majority of people, including society as a whole, once generally reacted to circumstances, and the environment around them, based on the values that they had been taught—based on ethics, principles, morals, beliefs, integrity and overall character. This meant that people once viewed matters based much more on right versus wrong, good versus evil, proper versus improper, wise versus unwise, and even law versus sin.
Sadly, even tragically, a regard for values of almost any kind now carries very little weight in the thinking of most in the world. Today, hurt feelings, emotions and perceptions have become much more important—have been given much greater credence in people’s thinking—than at probably any other time in human history.
There is no aspect of life left unchanged by this trend.
Living Daily “Soap Operas”
Millions of children and teenagers today cannot handle even the simplest obstacles, problems and challenges so basic to everyday life. In part, this is because they have never or only rarely been told “no” by their parents or other authority figures—they have rarely been denied anything. Therefore, seemingly every “issue” or crisis causes them to “go to pieces.”
The result has been that much of today’s generation is living out a kind of daily “soap opera.” Everything involves emotional melodrama because society has been and is being conditioned, now through the recent phenomenon of “reality television,” to continually await the latest twist, next chapter or new episode being played out on screen.
More often than ever, when young children do not get their way, they throw temper tantrums if not disciplined. Usually, parents do nothing, but as these same children grow up, they eventually realize that it is unacceptable for an adult to fall to the floor, kicking and screaming. So, most—but not all—learn to hide or suppress tantrums.
But little has changed on the inside. While teens and adults may have learned to cover up some or most of their emotions on the outside, many are still screaming, crying and going to pieces inside. This is exactly why so many grow up appearing to be mature but, in reality, have remained incredibly immature.
Many young people and even adults today battle moodiness, often brooding and becoming easily annoyed when they are not the center of attention. In the pursuit of happiness, most of society almost constantly caters to their every whim and desire—without regard for the consequences. Just look at the pampered athletes throughout professional sports, and these are the “role models” that millions of children, teens and young adults are copying.
Today’s teenagers are also much more easily influenced by their peers than just a generation ago. Rather than using their own minds and character to make sound decisions, they succumb to the easier path of following the crowd. Acceptance has become all-important in today’s world. Worse, and even more common, most individuals now refuse to take responsibility for anything—feeling, in the age of “victimhood,” that almost nothing is ever really their fault. The “blame game” has become epidemic.
By the age of 16, a teenager has usually reached a certain level of physical maturity. It is at this point that he may begin to think more seriously about life. Yet—and this is critical to comprehend—it is usually not until around age 25 that one reaches a significant level of mental maturity. But even this applied more to generations past.
