Do you mean you have no memory of a tune, scent, a former home? No techniques to accomplish a goal or solve a problem, no idea how to win a game? You never have a fantasy or a plan? All these are ideas. So are equations, opinions, beliefs , mental pictures and those conversations you create when you are thinking about what you should have said to the boss when she humiliated you in front of the client. So are the shared concepts behind the words beauty, honesty, freedom, calm, ego, self, even, yes, idea. In fact, it would have been impossible to ask this question if you really lacked the ability to deliberately think of an idea, because the question is an idea, made by applying grammar, also an idea, to at least four ideas I can count.

People unable to create an idea may exist – but we can’t communicate with them to know what, if anything, is going on in their heads. If they do, they could only survive in a society that had the resources to keep their bodies alive. They might be among those considered in a vegetative state, but then advances in science have found that many thought vegetative were, in fact, conscious, but unable to respond to their environment.

Gwan wit’ee. Everyone has their own abilities. Stop worrying about what you are not so good at and work on developing your talents.

Because life is it’s own joy, and being alive the greatest gift. The loneliness will pass and return, the work grind you down as a song heard in passing will lift you up, the endless obligations are part of being an inherently social species. But, whether human or crocodilian, garden slug or spider, there is pleasure in the warm sun and a full belly, in waking from a good sleep and stretching whatever muscles your ancestors bequeathed. It’s only those who demand that, somehow, the universe give them some cosmic purpose – we, who are less than a virus floating around a sparkling grain of sand on an endless beach – who cannot find enough in life to be happy.

Really depends on whether or not you think adolescence is a mental illness or just a really nasty period (pun semi-intended) to live through. Sounds like Ashlyn has additional emotional issues that could be rooted in being a black girl in a white world, or having a demanding parent, or whatever. She needs help from a knowledgeable adult. Taking it out on Lena is not going to help either of them. Maybe ask Lena what she feels about it, if she knows what the root problem is, and if she wants to continue the friendship. It might make a difference to Lena to know you are there for her.