While watching a montage of recent smash-and-grab robberies in major American cities, I thought of a long-ago friend and her idea about “free expression rooms” for children.
I disagreed then and disagree now. Granted, children are cute and affectionate, but they are also self-centered. Ask any parent of a child going through the “terrible twos.” Children need committed mentors (ideally parents) to teach them how to adapt to a world beyond themselves.
My friend’s free expression rooms came to mind as I reread psychotherapist M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Traveled,” his classic tome about the often painful process of achieving mental and spiritual maturity. Nowhere does he mention “free expression rooms.”
The “Road” is divided into four topics describing ascendent stages of spiritual and mental development (to Peck, they are synonymous). Each of the four is then divided into subsections.
His first stage, Discipline, is divided into three subsections: Problems and Pain, Delayed Gratification, and Responsibility. The opening sentences of Problems and Pain remain embedded in my mind: “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. Once we truly know that life is difficult … then life is no longer difficult.”
Peck continues: “[Most] moan more or less incessantly…about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief…that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race, or even their species, and not upon others.”
In the four decades since “Road” was first published, victimhood, encouraged by many to advance their own ends, has become fashionable. Anger and moaning are a life-choice for millions.
Peck is right. Life is difficult. He’s likewise right that one can wallow in the perverse pleasure that problems proffer or do something about them.
We all must choose.
Peck defines delaying gratification as “a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with.”
We mature against our will.
Experience teaches that nothing compares to the sense of relief and accomplishment after confronting and resolving our problems while suffering through the changes. It is difficult, but Peck says, “It is the only decent way to live.”
Regarding Responsibility, “(W)e cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them.”
Peck indicts the many who seek to avoid the pain of confronting their problems by convincing themselves that the problems were caused by others or by circumstances beyond their control. Therefore, it’s up to others to solve their problems for them.
If that plaint sounds familiar, it’s because it’s voiced daily by the media, politicians and self-styled community “leaders” who earn their living preaching victimhood, anger and blame.
As I watched the mayhem on the streets, it occurred to me that to the rioters, the streets are their free expression rooms. For whatever reason, lack of parental guidance or other caring, responsible adult role models, the troublemakers are wholly unacquainted with Discipline as Peck defines it.
Delinquents are frequently referred to as “troubled youths.” Still, they more resemble children enjoying themselves with no fear of consequences than “troubled.”
Lawless mobs know nothing of a better way. Their free expression rooms are dead-end streets leading nowhere, or worse.
They’ve never been shown a way that, with courage and the right action, leads to freedom, joy and a life worth living.
They’ve never been shown the road less traveled.
