"I didn't sign up for this"

 I confess. I let myself watch too much YouTube, especially short videos (that are basically TikTok even though I will never have TikTok on my phone. 

Recently I saw a video, I think by Ben Shapiro, criticizing a young woman on Tik Tok who had sued her parents for "having her." A judge (stupidly) had awarded the young woman $5000 a month support from her parents (for how long, I don't know), but the parents had appealed and that was rescinded. The young woman was complaining about having to get a job and support herself. 

She clearly faced life as "I didn't sign up for this." 

None of us signed up for life or any of the circumstances of our lives. Medical conditions, ethnicity, sex, giftedness, region, parents, physical characteristics, parental socioeconomic status--nope. Not our choice, and not our choice to even talk about it being a choice. 

And it might be that the randomness (seeming randomness) would be the core reason for any mental health problems. I mean, really--if one does not believe in a sovereign, loving Creator, what is it all about? Why wouldn't one be depressed, or insane? 

Most people figure it out, find something meaningful in their lives, and don't expect their parents to support them indefinitely.  Thankfully. But I have heard multiple times lately that we are in a mental health crisis, and I can't help thinking the core understanding behind and beneath "I didn't sign up for this"--that I should have a say in everything that happens to me, that it's all to random and without order--is to blame, if blame is the point. 

If I didn't sign up for "the way my life is," then I should have the right to do whatever I want to to allay the damage, make it the way it would be if I had signed up for "it."  And if I didn't sign up for it, then I should be fully justified in whatever beliefs and attitudes I have about it, and the resulting emotional damage and behavior.

I listened to two very good podcasts today. Curtis Chang on the Good Faith Podcast interviewed Jean Twenge, the psychologist who wrote Generation Me and IGen, and on The Habit Podcast Kevin Rogers interviewed Alan Noble (author of On Getting Out of Bed).  Both were about mental health with the Gen Z crowd. Rarely a weekday goes by that some student of mine doesn't reference his or her mental health, depression, anxiety, or similar condition. 

I recommend these; I have fallen in love with podcasting, have my own, and listen to them every chance I get. Yet I recognize that the opportunity of podcasting is tied into the same source of all this declining mental health--the little computers in our pockets that control our lives. That is the thesis of Jean Twenge's work, which is quite expansive. There is more--the isolation, the overprotectedness of parents, the Great Recession, and so forth. 

However, our society is convinced that we are facing a combination of forces that have never been exceeded in their severity. I guess this is what we get when no one studies history seriously or listens to the people over 80. Sheesh. They didn't sign up for this either, not did those born in any other time period. It is the human condition that we didn't sign up for it. Only recognizing the truth of 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: 

Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.