Are We Really Soft? Has Comfort Made Us Mentally Weaker?
My father, like many men from his generation, often says things like: “This generation has gotten soft. They lack the grit we used to have. They don’t know how to keep themselves busy, they’re too idle. And that’s why they suffer from things like depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses.”
He believes that because technology has made life easier, we now have too much time on our hands, time that turns into idleness. And maybe, in some ways, he’s right.
Education has become easier. Today, I can get a degree from the comfort of my room, something that wasn’t possible back then. Cooking has become easier too; we can prepare a meal in less than 20 minutes. Meanwhile, some of our mothers cooked over open fires, using firewood balanced between three stones. As a society, we’ve worked hard to make everything easier for ourselves. But there’s one thing we haven’t been able to change Or successfully predict………
Life.
We improved everything around us, but life didn’t get the memo. It stayed unpredictable and it’s the one thing we can’t negotiate with. Life humbles you when you get too comfortable, and many of us aren’t prepared for that. That’s where anxiety and depression can creep in. We long for the finer things in life, but we’re not always ready to do the work required to get them.
My father wanted to succeed, so he walked miles to school just to get an education. He sold fresh fish in a market more than 10 kilometres from his home. Imagine telling a child today that they have to sell fish to pay their school fees, let alone walk that distance to do it.
They worked hard so we wouldn’t have to go through what they did. And yet, because of that, we’re labelled soft and weak. Maybe that has something to do with how we were raised, but that’s a conversation for another day.
Growing up, we didn’t have a washing machine. So I learned to take off my white socks before playing in the dirt, because that one pair had to last. At the time it felt like a small, insignificant rule, just another thing I was told to do. But as we grow older, we learn to recognise patterns. And looking back, that small habit laid the foundation for something much bigger like: gratitude, discipline, and an early understanding of cause and effect. Because i knew my mom would either make me scrub those socks until they were perfectly white again, or she’d whoop my ass and then still make me wash them. So yes, fear played a role. But sometimes the most important things we learn come disguised as the most ordinary ones..
But not everyone grew up like that. Some kids had 20 pairs of socks or a washing and drying machine. For them, getting dirty wasn’t a big deal.
And that’s the point.
The toughness our parents and grandparents developed through daily struggle is no longer required of us in the same way. Our systems are built for comfort, not resilience, designed to make life easier, but not necessarily to make us stronger.
So maybe my father is right. Maybe we are softer. Maybe we are more idle. And maybe that plays a role in why we struggle with things like anxiety, depression, ADHD, and other challenges. Because the comfort of our world doesn’t account for one simple truth: Life is still hard. Some might even argue it’s harder now.
But here’s the part my father and many others from his generation often overlook:
We are shaped by the people who raised us. Most of us inherit our core values and beliefs from our parents and the people around us. So if we are unprepared for the realities of life, they must share some of that responsibility. I say some because we also owe it to ourselves to grow, adapt, and prepare. When we fail to do that, we fall into blame, complaints and yes, what my father calls “weakness.”
If there’s a lesson in all of this, it’s this:
We must relearn what the modern world no longer teaches us, how to endure, how to persist, and how to suffer without losing hope.In my view, anxiety and depression are not simply signs of weakness. They are signals that we need a different kind of strength, one that no machine or convenience can provide. And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can begin building the strength we actually need to face it.
Just THOUGHTs
