Angst: Youth Culture and Coming of Age

Angst in the Coming-of-Age Process

Anxiety and anguish are only two of the many words that can be used to define angst. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/angst). Throughout our lives, we are faced with many challenges that may cause severe anxiety and/or fear. People tend to face angst when put in life changing situations. Not necessarily having to deal with a life or death situation, many young adults and children go through tough times during their “coming-of-age” process. This angst may be developed as a result of numerous things. However, growing up I learned some reasons as to why many young adults face anxiety when looking towards the future. The unknown and finding out who we truly are may cause many to feel angst.

As said by Dave Kydd, “Where is your mind when you start to feel anxious or panicky? Chances are the answer is… the future” (http://www.mindyourmind.ca/expression/blog/fight-anxiety-finding-your-groove_).While growing up, I never knew exactly what I wanted to do. I always had this fascination with Hollywood and its glamorous lifestyle, but not knowing what to expect in my near future, I had to imagine a very extreme and exaggerated ideal in order to please myself. I also quickly learned that living in Hollywood wasn't an actual job. I spent many nights of my childhood contemplating different scenarios as to what my future would hold for me; most of the time I would just come back to a blank canvas of ideas not knowing how exactly to paint my first stroke. The older I got, the more people would ask me what I wanted to do when I was older, how many kids I wanted, when I wanted to get married and where I wanted to live. I usually never had an answer to these many questions and always asked myself “Am I really supposed to know the answer to all these questions?”. The unknown quickly became something I feared the most. I always felt obligated to give an answer and would usually just respond with the first thing that came to mind. For almost every child and teenager, the coming-of-age process is in fact the unknown. In his article, Duncan Graham-Rowe states that the nerve activity in teens is so intense that it becomes quite difficult to process basic information resulting in causing them to become emotionally and socially inept (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2925-teen-angst-rooted-in-busy-brain.html#.VCsWSFZrylI). We don’t know what the future holds for us, and this does cause us to be emotionally unstable since there is in fact no way of knowing. I do think that not knowing what the future holds does cause angst among many, including myself.

Another thing that really affected me while growing up was trying to identify myself in this massively huge universe. I never knew who I was, to this day I am still positively trying to figure out who I am. When I was younger I was bullied and my confidence was completely shut down. I had no idea who I was and it was hard for me to figure it out since every time I tried to be my own self and differentiate myself from the others I would in a way get “punished” because I was considered “weird” for trying to be different. Point being, many people struggle with finding out who they really are and as we grow older and older we become more and more anxious since we still have yet to find out who we are.

All  in all, I do personally believe that the unknown and the quest to find our true self are the main reasons of angst when going through the coming-of-age process.