The first lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy set the scene and mood for perhaps the greatest poetry ever written.

Midway this way of life we’re bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.*

My daughter was released from the hospital 10 weeks after we took her to the emergency room. She was not “midway” through life, but only a teenager when she found herself in the dark wood of anxiety that led to the hell of anorexia. The Anxious Generation... Haidt, Jonathan Best Price: $13.46 Buy New $15.24 (as of 05:14 UTC - Details)

For several weeks before she was admitted it was a war, where every meal was a battle and every swallow was a struggle. But the war was not against my daughter. It was against the voice in her head, the demon, the liar who wants her to suffer before taking her life. Personalizing the illness as a demonic possession is as real as it gets; more so than a mysterious virus. Eventually, the voice was so strong that she stopped eating anything and we all agreed, even my daughter, that she needed to go to the hospital. Leaving the hospital does not mean she is cured. Far from it. The long climb out of anorexia is a difficult purgatory that could take years. Thus, we know this will take a long time to pass, but we know that it will pass.

My daughter’s condition can be added to the terrible toll of mental illness taken on teenagers today. An age of anxiety is described in a new book by Jonathan Haidt. (see the data in this preview The Anxious Generation | Jonathan Haidt). Look around and you will find articles, books and conversations about these problems (for example, here, here, here, here, and here). The anxiety of my daughter has certainly been exacerbated by social networks, but there are any number of foisted anxieties of modern culture that contributed. But I should add hereditary factors and parental errors of commission and omission must have contributed to this problem. I am sure I have made mistakes, but I cannot say exactly what they were.

It is not my purpose here to describe this terrible illness in any detail, though it is well worth investigating for any parent even if they are not actively dealing with it. What I will do briefly is touch on the ordeal of suffering I have witnessed my daughter experience.

It is now several decades since this passage from the Pensées of Pascal became a paradigm of guidance for me.

So I hold out my arms to my Redeemer, who, having been foretold for four thousand years, has come to suffer and to die for me on earth, at the time and under all the circumstances foretold. By His grace, I await death in peace, in the hope of being eternally united to Him. Yet I live with joy, whether in the prosperity which it pleases Him to bestow upon me, or in the adversity which He sends for my good, and which He has taught me to bear by His example.

It has been my experience that suffering, failure and sacrifice are necessary to achieve a proper understanding of the world. In contrast, a life without any suffering or sacrifice would make for a stunted individual. The fact that a rite of passage to adulthood does not exist in the modern world is perhaps a cause of all the anxiety.

The problem of suffering has been addressed for as long as humans have contemplated philosophically and religiously. The Catholic response is addressed here and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  It is ironic that during lent we fast to attempt to rule over our passions. For my daughter it is a passion to fast that is ruling her. For centuries The Consolation of Philosophy by the Roman philosopher Boethius, has expressed the stoic response to suffering (see The Book that the West Needs – with Stephen Blackwood – The Symbolic World). But ordinary people everywhere testify to their growth into their full potential during a period of suffering and failure such as this rando interviewed by Paul Vander Klay. “Who the Hell Am I? Am I Really a Nothing?!” and the Abyss Stared Back… Andy as London Prodigal (youtube.com).

The Coddling of the Am... Haidt, Jonathan Best Price: $12.68 Buy New $13.39 (as of 02:43 UTC - Details) As my daughter’s father it pains me to see her suffer. But I take solace in the belief that this suffering could be the relief of her underlying anxiety when she beats anorexia. And her understanding of herself and others can give her a sense of empathy that will help make her the best person she could be. Finally, my daughter’s predicament, her dark passage, also brought to mind this famous bit of poetry by T. S. Eliot.

Four Quartets – 2 East Coker

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not

*Note: Translation by Dorthey Sayers The Comedy Of Dante Alighieri : Sayers Dorothy L., Tr : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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