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June 01, 2004

Against the Wall (II)

I will try to counter-balance Cookie’s five posts on Against The Wall. While Cookie is her usual perceptive self and pinpoints all the little things, she overdoes it sometimes: “I had a seriously hard time believing that someone whose husband is Jerry and son is Oved has a name like Malky. Jillian, yes. Malka, maybe. Malky?”

I don't know whether this is still true today. Drugs are a big factor in today's scene. They were not so common in the young frum world when I was in my teens, and what I've seen seems to indicate that when you add drugs to the mix, a brush with freiing-out turns much more permanent.

Let’s not forget that drugs are an effect, not a cause. No serious learning boy that is far from the fringe will use drugs. Yes drugs will push a teen farther out, but we should be dealing with their issues before it gets to that point. I know many teen that fell by the wayside without ever using drugs. If I may use myself as an example, I was pretty close to ‘the edge,’ yet I never touched drugs.

Let me take this opportunity to remind you, teens on the fringe are not just at a risk of dropping their Yiddishkeit, they are also at a great risk of losing their chances of living their lives as productive citizens in ANY society. It goes without saying that from a Torah perspective, losing their Yiddishkeit is more than enough reason to worry and a life without Torah is an empty life whether you are a ‘productive citizen of society’ or not.

I always found it odd that a person would spiritually leave a community yet physically remain in it. When I was younger, I had pretty definite ideas about this. If I was being charitable, I attributed it to a lack of funds; you couldn't make it on your own two feet in the real world, so you'd mooch off your parents, rely on your neighbors for a job, and do whatever the hell you please. What a loser. If I was being less charitable, I attributed it to a desire for attention. Look, in the real world nobody cares if you look like a dude. Everyone else can or does. You're only distinctive in a frum community, because you look so different.

Here’s my try to shed some light on the above from a ‘been there done that’ perspective. While the two points Cookie mentions are real in a way, there are many more ‘colors’ to it. There’s the craving for love. Hashem created a person with a certain connection to family that no amount of hate can completely erase. There’s a subconscious hope for love that is a factor in keeping a wayward teen at home. The main reason, in my opinion, that they stay in the community at least physically, is friends. It takes a lot to transplant yourself somewhere without any friends in similar situations. You cannot transplant a kid who grew up with a privileged upbringing in upper-Manhattan, to a farm town in middle of nowhere. I think that if somehow five teens would get together and move to say, Phoenix, Arizona, a community would develop at an alarming pace.

Another thing that keeps teens in place is the bridges that have not been burnt. Teens get that feeling of belonging when they still have some connection to people in the community, positive connections. Keep the lines of communication open with a teen on the fringe in your community and you are dramatically increasing his chances of coming back to a real life, the life of Torah. You may say “Why should I give a job to a loser ‘vus halt by gurnisht’?” Or “how can I ‘stay friends’ with him, he will think I condone the life he’s leading?” Remember: their lives are not real happy lives, if you burn the bridges, where will they turn to when they get that pang of guilt? Or when they reach rock bottom? If all bridges are burnt, that little Hisorrerus Hashem sends once in while will do nothing for him, it will sent him farther into depression and cause him to stray even further. If you keep a bridge open, he MIGHT just turn around and talk to you. No, he won’t just ‘come back.’ But isn’t it worth it? There are chances that one of Hashem’s wake-up calls will cause him to really re-consider his life. If he has nowhere to turn to, if all the bridges were burnt, he will have no outlet. It takes a very loud bell to get someone to wake up and come back, it takes a bell much louder to get him to swim back on his own.

I may have veered off-course here, and I apologize.

To Mrs. Pearlman if she’s reading: Thank you for a great book. Thank you for touching on topics that have been under the carpet and trampled on for way to long. Keep it up!

Posted by notepad at June 1, 2004 10:00 PM

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