I believe one of the underlying realities behind the epidemic of suicide among adolescents and senior citizens is that we are a culture that values people primarily for what they do. In our culture persons’ value, meaning and purpose reside primarily in the nature of their work. Teenagers don’t “do” anything. Slinging hamburgers or bagging groceries isn’t “doing” anything—not in the culture’s value system. Adolescents are struggling to find their identity, struggling to find their personhood, struggling to find their personal integrity, struggling to find who they are in a culture that says
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