Lose the Battles. Not the War.

"The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered." - Harriet Ann Jacobs

Have you noticed how society, and by society I'm talking about young people, teens and people in their early twenties, has changed their message over the decades. A meme I saw captured the sad reality that I'm pointing at:

The Gen X Dream: When I grow up I want a mansion and lots of money and a white picket fence...

The Millenial Dream: When I grow up I want to afford my own house.

This Generation: I wanna die before I graduate high school.

Did you laugh? Because I did at first and then I realized that it wasn't even a little bit funny. That meme shouldn't make you laugh. It should make you stop dead in your tracks because the sad thing is: it's reality for more teenagers today than ever before. It's a mantra we're accepting as a society because life is hard. Maybe harder now than ever before for young people to be alive and yet the predominate thing theme now, unlike any other generation in all of time is that because it's hard, the only alternative must be to completely give up and submit to miserable life. I would argue that the attitudes are responsible for these things:

The Gen X Attitude: It's a challenge, so I'll buckle up and accept and the challenge.

The Millenial Attitude: It's a challenge, therefore I will take every short cut possible and whine about it en route to trying to accomplishing anything.

This Generation: It's too challenging, therefore I won't bother trying. Netflix it is!

Attitudes are related to many things. I must acknowledge, as I did in an above paragraph, that this is the hardest time for young people to be alive. It's harder than ever to graduate college, and degrees are so inflated that as Sir Ken Robinson points out in one of the talks I put out a few weeks ago, many kids with degrees are playing video games in their parents basements where in former generations if you had a degree you had a job. We are inundating kids with pressures that won't matter six months down the road and it's a big problem for kids to deal with. Not to mention, kids have more distractions at their fingertips then any generation to come before them (good essay on that coming next week!) and when teenagers are biologically inclined to be lazy anyway, it is very hard for kids in this generation. I understand that. But honestly, even despite all the struggles we live under today, this motto which is so commonplace today that life is stupid, I just wanna quit and die (or keep going but accept that every waking moment is going to be literal hell on earth) can't be justified by circumstances. They aren't THAT much harder than they were just a half a century ago. Can someone who was alive in the 60s and 70s email me and vouch for the correctness of this statement?

The fact is we are letting ourselves think this because it's what society is telling ourselves and because we are not inclined, just because other people around us are, to submit to misery and totally give up on all things. To accept life as miserable. To cease finding the good in anything. And I'm done with that. I'm sick of people stressing themselves out and missing out on joy in their lives because of predetermined mindset of misery. I'm sick of teens today drowning in a weight of life so heavy that suicide is a joke, just a Grumpy Old Men "Lucky bastard" moment. Because it's a mindset. And like all mindsets, just like I learned with Mrs. Shepard and Mrs. Belcher in fifth grade, it can be changed. So I'm giving us a new mindset. Enough with the "I just wanna curl in a ball and die" language. Cause I'm really done with that.

I've painted a picture of the old mindset. How will I draw up a new one? I'm using an extended metaphor and that is the metaphor you found in your quote for the week. The metaphor is war. I'm calling life a war. War is filled with battles which rages on many different fronts. There are battles on the front of girls, and another on the front of school work, one on social media (again, can't wait to tackle that next week!) so many different battles. But they're all a part of this big picture battle: the battle of life.

With that you have to accept the fact that in war you will loose battles and you will win battles. You will go through time periods where you can do no wrong, you will go through periods where you will lose and lose and lose. Sometimes you have to look at those times and make tough war time decisions. You have to make difficult changes in your life, and I call that bringing in reinforcements. Trying new attack tactics. Because if you keep doing what you've been doing you keep losing. You have to find the source of the defeat. Get rid of social media. Get rid of the negative influences. Start working out. Start eating better. Start reading your Bible. But you keep fighting the battle. Loosing can feel habitual because as has been said, it is a habit. Sometimes you get in the down slumps. But whatever you do, you don't quit fighting!

Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. When you lose a lot you make adjustments. One thing you can't afford to do though is to quit because the minute you lay down and the minute you quit you have not lost a battle, you have lost the war. There are times when you are loosing the war, but you have not lost the war until you give up. There are also times when you are winning the war but you have not yet won. You're just constantly fighting. And you don't stop.

Here's what I've learned. Life is going to be filled with good and bad. There are miserable things. There are setbacks that are just a pain in the butt and that are just flat out of your control. This week our bus wrecked (we're all fine) and we wasted two hours with the police and fire department before we finally got home at nearly 6 o'clock. But what I've learned is that you can't control everything. Battle fact: you control what you can control and don't freak out over what you can.

We sit here and say: "life isn't fair. Why does bad stuff happen?" Society tries to answer that. They will tell you that things get better, that you have to be patient for change and that every little thing is just gonna turn out great." But that doesn't work! And when it doesn't work, rather than acknowledge that the defeat has come from complacency in the war, the generals wave the white flag.

Reality: of course life isn't fair. At times it sucks. We live in a sin cursed world ladies and gentlemen. This world won't bring you satisfaction. Actually what I'm wondering is why anything good ever happens? We need to appreciate this reality, control what we can control and fight the whole war. Not winning everything. But winning the battles we can control. Not giving up. Not being lazy. You take the good with the bad. And you take life. Because the battle is hard. I mean there's a reason I chose war to picture it! But somedays there are beautiful victories, rainbows after storms and you keep fighting for that. You keep playing this game because you can't afford to quit. You keep fighting because on your death bed you will decide whether or not you won the war. And it won't battle if you won the popularity battle in high school. It won't matter if you won on the "climb the company latter front" or the marry a beautiful woman front or the battle of "Can Braxton loose a damn pound?" But it will matter if you won the war. And that's why you keep fighting.

Have a great week,

Braxton Schieler

As a kind of post script, I include two disclaimers.

One: In reality you aren't going to win the war in this life. I'm trying not to be super religious in these essays but I can't talk about joy and winning battles in this life. As I alluded to, it's a sin-cursed, hell-bound world. Nothing you do changes that. Find joy in Christ ladies and gentlemen. Reread my Christmas essay. I'll have more joy focussed resources coming in the coming weeks as well. But please don't look for it in this world. That's a way to lose the war.

Two: I look forward to addressing a practical application and reason for losing the war next week attacking technology and social media. Stay tuned guys. It's going to be good, and it might have a small dose of ranting.