Laid up in bed with a stinker of a cold, I took the opportunity to join the rest of the English speaking world, and binge-watched Adolescence.
It’s very good indeed, and the hype is well-deserved. It’s well-written, phenomenally well-acted (Stephen Graham can do no wrong in my eyes, but everybody else is brilliant, too) and the way each episode is filmed in a single take is completely mind-blowing! 🤯
It’s also very sad, and I cried at the end, as I’m sure you did/will, too.
But I didn’t find it all that shocking. It all made total sense to me, as did the actions of each of the characters.
They were all playing out their scripts, figuratively and literally, as we all are (and that’s where the heartbreak came in – such loving parents, consciously going out of their way to overcome generational trauma… and yet this 😱💔)
But here’s the thing.
It would be very easy to watch it and conclude that to prevent these sorts of things from happening:
- We need to ban smartphones
- We need tighter regulation on social media
- Certain ‘bad actors’ in the ‘manosphere’ need de-platforming
- Parents need to be better educated about the inherent dangers
- Kids shouldn’t be left alone in their rooms with phones, unsupervised
…and loads of other measures along those lines.
Now, I actually think most of those are pretty good ideas, and I support them, but they’re not the actual problem
None of them are the real reason Jamie did what he did.
The real reason came out in Episode 3 (which is surely winning an Emmy, and yes, I did say there would be ⚠️ minor spoilers so this is your last chance to stop reading now, if you haven’t watched it, but intend to)!!
Because the real issue was his relationship to thought; to the stories he was living in, inside his head.
The root of the problem was the fact that he genuinely believed he was ugly (a thought), and no good at anything (a thought), and a soldier in some fabricated battle of the sexes where he was always on the losing side (a thought).
Nobody had told him that underneath the weather of all that thinking, he was actually ok; innately healthy. Consequently he inhabited a reality where there was something wrong with him… and his behaviour followed suit.
I'm Jamie. We all are.
Nobody told me that underneath the weather of all my thinking, I was ok, too; that I was innately healthy. Consequently, I used to believe there was something wrong with me, too… and my behaviour followed suit.
But because of my conditioning, experience, upbringing & genetic makeup, that belief manifested in hopping from one career (and relationship) to the next, never being happy (becoming increasingly un-happy, actually), and coping with alcohol.
‘Jamie’s’ manifested in a way that was contextual to his conditioning (which happened to include all the stuff he’d got sucked into on social media).
But it’s the exact same thing. The same cause and the same cure.
A simple case of mistaken identity: acting in a way to protect an image of ‘self’ that’s no more than a collection of ideas.
We all do it, all the time!
So what’s the takeaway here?
It’s an important piece of television and if you still haven’t watched it, I recommend you do. (These ‘spoilers’ won’t actually ruin it for you, because the devil is in the detail and the acting and the filming and how all that resonates with your own Thought System – not the crude details of the plot, which is pretty straightforward.)
But I think any knee-jerk reaction to it could be a classic case of outside-in thinking: Hey, if we fix the circumstances, then everything will be sorted and we’ll be ok!
And it just doesn’t work like that.
We’re already ok – it’s the fact we get conned by Thought, suggesting otherwise, that gets us into difficulty!
If we want the best for our kids, for them to live happy, fulfilled lives, then as my colleague Terry Rubenstein is always saying:
Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.
And that means not trying to remove all obstacles from their path, hoping that will make their lives just about possible to cope with; it means pointing them to their innate mental health & resilience, so that they can handle whatever life throws at them, with wisdom, common sense, creativity, love and understanding.
Here endeth the lesson!
😁
Giles
p.s. I’m not done – if you watch carefully, his sister Lisa is the character who best demonstrates these traits. In Episode 4, when asked if anyone is “causing you trouble,” she rolls her eyes and replies, “Everyone causes me trouble – I’m Jamie’s sister!” … but remains in touch with her common sense, doesn’t take any of it personally and maintains perspective on the wider situation.
p.p.s. If you’ve watched it, what did you make of it? What did I miss? Am I completely off base with these observations? Let me know in the comments, below! 👇🏻