Life Is Too Easy

This essay was submitted to the New York Times Editorial Contest. It was capped at 450 words and required multiple sources to be incorporated.

Ostensibly, we are at the peak of human civilization. Americans are earning more than ever and all signs point towards a better future for everyone. According to the US Census, the poverty rate has fallen from 23% to just over 13% since 1960. From the same source, the median income in the US has risen from $47,600 in 1960 to $57,600 in 2016, adjusted for inflation, of course.

Then why is mental health a rising crisis in upper-middle-class America, the epitome of the American Dream? Why are we reaching record levels of diagnosis for antidepressants and other drugs? Why do 20% of teens, according to I Need a Lighthouse, experience depression at some point even though our modern world is infinitely less difficult to survive in than in the past? In a 1992 New York Times article, Daniel Goleman sagely predicted that we are “witnessing the dawn of the Age of Melancholy.”

Materially, we are far better off than people were even 25 years ago. Cell phones, the internet, and modern medical technologies have made life quite comfortable. How is it that we are wealthier, more educated, and have a higher standard of living than people of the past, yet we are increasingly unhappy with our lives?

One simple, yet paradoxical answer: life is too easy. We have reached a level of societal advancement where evolution is essentially irrelevant. No longer is it a struggle against nature to survive and reproduce.

During the Great Depression, everyday life was hard for most Americans. They had grown accustomed to hardship and thus they were able to better handle adversity when faced with it. Each mishap didn’t seem so bad when compared to the hardships they had all faced in the past.

Middle-class America has risen above the struggle for everyday survival that Americans faced in the early 20th century. We enjoy nearly unlimited access to amenities, healthcare, and technology. We are unwilling accept that life is hard, because logically it shouldn’t be.

Thus, when teens experience “hardships” such as a getting an 89 instead of a 90 on that math test we studied “so hard” for or losing that big soccer game, we break down. We cannot handle even the smallest inconveniences in our lives anymore without tears and stress. If we took the “road less traveled by” and challenged ourselves more with mundane details that make our lives small increments harder — taking cold showers, checking our phones less, getting off the couch, working out, forgiving someone you want to just scream at — those sort of things, perhaps then we could be more prepared when inevitable hardships do face us, and we will be known as a resolute, stoic, and antifragile generation.

Sources:

“Current Population Reports.” PDF file, 9 June 1961.

Goleman, Daniel. “A Rising Cost of Modernity: Depression.” New York Times. New York Times, www.nytimes.com/1992/12/08/science/a-rising-cost-of-modernity-depression.html. Accessed 28 Mar. 2018. Originally published in New York Times, 8 Dec. 1992.

“Poverty Data Tables.” United States Census Bureau, www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/data/tables.html. Accessed 28 Mar. 2018.

“Teen Depression.” I Need a LightHouse, www.ineedalighthouse.org/depression-suicide/teen-depression/. Accessed 28 Mar. 2018.