麻豆社

Good morning.

My daughter has started thinking about what to study at university and which ones to apply to. An exciting time for any teenager - but parents might feel a twinge of unease.

A recent study has suggested that student suicides have been on the rise over the last decade.

University culture intensifies negative aspects of contemporary culture 鈥揷ompetitive hedonism and huge financial pressures. Even though most students are thoughtful, and critical of their culture, these narratives have huge force - you should be having the best time ever, as well as organising and paying for your future success. Difficult to do if you don鈥檛 have the money to finance your studies and you don鈥檛 feel you have an amazing social life.

I found my first year of university very challenging. Everyone seemed to be having enormous fun, and I didn鈥檛 quite share the vibe. I felt I was failing to have the right attitude.

I needed another perspective, so I could get a bit of distance on my situation. At this point I was on the fence about religion, but my residual familiarity with it helped - I knew that in the religious worldview it was normal to see life as a psychological struggle - one that could be agonisingly isolating.

In a sense our culture is trying to develop a more nuanced picture of the psyche - but it can鈥檛 quite move away from the idea that you ought to be healthy and happy and rich, and if you鈥檙e not you鈥檙e failing. This seems the view that secular culture gravitates to.

But if we suggest that it is unhealthy to be unhappy then it鈥檚 implied that normal healthy people are simply happy - and this increases anxiety in those who struggle to feel happy. We need to challenge the narrative that you鈥檙e either happy or you鈥檙e on the slippery slope to failure.

We need something that sidelines the question of how happy we feel. Of course, for believers, religion supplies this - it says that true psychological health comes from the pursuit of truth, whether it feels like fun or not. It might be necessary to endure great psychological hardship - the believer trusts that he or she will be granted the strength to endure it, and that it will be temporary.

There are secular versions of this perspective - for example Freud said that being a decent moral citizen will create low-level unhappiness that must simply be endured. And of course many people, whether religious or not, feel a duty to put the interests of their loved ones before their own. There is also an echo of this in the idea of the artistic or professional calling - the sense of having important work to do can eclipse the attempt to secure one鈥檚 own happiness. Wherever we find it, we all need something that downgrades happiness, throws a pinch of salt at it.

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