Drama, Mumford and Sons, and Love

I teach high school. We know this. So, to say that I an not use to a certain level of teenage drama and angst would be a false statement. Most days, I can laugh off the created, theatrical nature of drama as funny, typical teen behavior. I mean there is the Jersey Shore Effect, and every school now has their little over-baked, toasted versions of Snookie roaming the hallways. It is funny to laugh at the absurdity of the boys and girls who get into these sorts of things. I laugh at the fingers being waved, the heads being bobbed, the "thckkkk" sound being made with the teeth, as they tell their stories of insult to one another. It makes stories for me to tell my wife and friends and proves that my job is anything but boring.

But, like everything, I start wondering about the nature of what is really going on? Complications and drama in teen life have been around for a long time. I joked when I called it The Laguna Beach Effect, then The Hills Effect, then Lindsey Syndrome, and now the Snookie Effect, but it just goes to show, that we really can't blame it on these shows or people. I can blame the too tight torn t-shirts on Snookie, and I can blame the skirts that are too short for fatty thighs roaming our hallways on her, but the drama creation I can't. Shows like Jersey Shore don't create a wave of kids wanting to have drama in their life. It simply is a mirror held up to our society, showing the ravaging disease of desperation as people ceaselessly have a need to create drama in their lives. There is a need within our society to make your problems seem bigger, more important. We make words harsher in the stories we tell our friends. We fidget with dialogue to goad people into arguments. Every day I witness numerous kids explaining how they have been wronged as if they were the first child to ever have a friend talk about them. I watch them hurt their boyfriends by dumping them simply because they wanted to have a story to tell.

Why????

To me it seems that kids who do this sort of thing (and adults) have a need to feel important, to feel as if their life matters. And to get the satisfaction of feeling this, they create scenarios which seem emotionally shocking and draining to help make their life seem bigger, their problems overwhelming...to give them a means by which to show out and seem tough, strong. Their insecurity cannot be controlled, and it escapes them in choreographed waltzes of lies and harsh words.

That I find sad. It makes me wonder why their parents haven't made them feel as if they matter? Has no one told them even that God loves them and notices them without the theatrics and the Snookie tan? We could shrug it off and say it doesn't matter, that it is typical teen behavior, but unfortunately it effects their future behavior. They don't learn how to care for one another properly, or that love is an action most days, not a feeling.

My mouse wheel of a mind has had the song "Sigh No More" by Mumford and Sons on continual loop for the past two days. It talks about a "love that will not betray, dismay or enslave you," seemingly echoing the "love chapter" of Corinthians that talks about the selfless, humble nature of love. Love in this sense being a gift given through treatment, not a gift to be taken by force. I don't think these kids, these people, who fill the void by creating problems in their life, by being needy for emotional provocation, get this definition or context of love. That bothers me. It worries me that some people will not feel the peace of knowing that they matter--knowing they matter to a friend, to a spouse, to a parent, to a god--never having that burden, need lifted from their chest and allowed to simple relax, and take in the cleansing breath of satisfaction.

Maybe a satisfied Snookie on tv would help? I don't know. I know that I only can show the love that has been given to me from a loving God the best I can, and hope that even when I fail miserably at that, somehow the watered down, broken bits of that love will break into their lives.