Snippet: "The anxiety of self-creation"

snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

Here’s a snippet from an article by Ian Harber and Patrick Miller on “How to Prepare for the Metaverse”:

“The anxiety of self-creation is already crippling Gen Z and Millennials. The church may be the last place that accepts you as you’re made, not as you’re projected.”

Last week when I was sick, Lois did a pharmacy run for me and came back with some generic Sudafed since we were running low.

She bought the 12-hour version. I asked her why she would do that. She explained that that’s what she prefers. Take one tablet and forget about it.

I said I hate the 12-hour. What do you do at 6pm if you took it at 6am? She said, “Why do you have to be so picky!”

At that point I realized the hole I was digging for myself, the ingratitude of my attitude, and I apologized.

But the next time she goes to get some meds for me (two, maybe three years from now), when she faces the array of choices, she’s not going to remember my preferences. But she will remember I’m picky, and if she can’t get ahold of me to clarify what I want, the anxiety of a confrontation or argument for “getting the wrong thing” will set in.

I know. I feel it every time I go to the grocery store to get the one thing she needs for a recipe. I never seem to have enough information about what she needs when I face the array of choices.

Anxiety.

If you came of “internet and streaming age” in the last few years, take all that anxiety the rest of us have felt and feel about the choices we have to make and apply it to aspects of life and of our identity). An array of choices the rest of know weren’t even choices anyone could make or few cared to make a short time ago.

And the sense that you have to make these choices is the only world you’ve ever known.

Anxiety.

These choices are sold to us as the arrival of freedom and authenticity and happiness.

Again, for some younger folks, this is the only world they’ve ever known.

I grew up in a world that constantly insisted you can be anything you want to be. And it took decades of hearing this before It became common for some to question it.

“I’m a 17-year-old girl who hasn’t played one day of any sports in my life, and you say I can be an WNBA star if I want it badly enough? And, oh yeah, I’m barely five feet tall.”

Seriously, it’s only been in recent years that I’ve heard a consistent questioning of what now most people see as a false promise.

No, you can’t be anything you set your mind on to be.

And no, you don’t have to live in the dark side of that lie thinking you’re a failure because you failed to launch the next Amazon, rise to fame, or run an ultra marathon.

Look around. Almost everyone you personally know and love and respect have been as incapable as you to accomplish any of those kinds of things. And they’re still precious to you.

And yet here we have a whole new mantra, a brand new lie about choosing whatever identity you prefer.

And even bigger lies coming soon to a metaverse near you.

We need to be that church mentioned by the authors—a place that accepts you as you’re made. Yes, also loves you even as you seek to project something that you’re not, but not by entering into the lie that will destroy you in a thousand different ways. And then spit you out.

Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash