Call Me An Idealist, But You Were Thinking It Too...

I do not blame my father or mother.
I blame their generation. And the generation that came before.
We have been taught how to live too well and been shown how to not love well enough.

When I say "live too well", I do not mean living life to the fullest.
I mean by living life beyond what they were able.
Decades of people preferring to appear to have money than to live within their means.
Years of people preferring to have thousands in debt than to go without.
Always being told that we need to have more, buy more, be more... but having to become a slave to a job that make every good part of a person shrivel up by the time retirement came around, all the while the retirement age getting pushed further and further away so that there was never really a time to enjoy what was left of life.

And by "not love well enough", I mean that no one knows how to wait for it or to savor it once it is there. No one knows what commitment means. Divorce is commonplace, even expected. We have lost our ability to fight for what we want. We have grown selfish and callous and defensive. Love is left to be a fairytale that becomes a nightmare as childhood passes to adulthood. We have not been given the tools to handle conflict. We bolt at the first signs of tension and we don't understand how our feelings have waned because we have not invested or worked enough to sustain it.

My generation may be apathetic... some lazy, some cynical. But how else should we view things when all we know has been left in disrepair? Our world is in shambles - politically, emotionally. After decades of technology we are just beginning to see the reprecussions of what we have created. Our need for instant gratification has lead to debts upon debts, so much so that even our government cannot help us as they cannot even help themselves. Our homes are filled with strangers clinging to therapy bills and secret vices.

Fuck all of your idols. They are not mine.

I do not want a job that chains me to a chair and bathes me in flourescent light.
I do not want a mate who slowly learns to hate me while I withhold my trust.
I do not want a car that leaves me in fear of its theft & destruction because it costs almost as much as my house and I cannot afford to replace it.
I do not want a home filled with things I do not need.
I do not want a world that tells me I must do and be and act as I am told, just like everyone else is and should.
I do not want the next 70 years to leave the future generations to clean up the mess that mine makes.

Rambles in the Tumbles

There is a dividing line between the familiar and the strange. And we, as humans, have this tug of war between intense curiosity for all things unknown and a craving for routine.

It's hard to admit that though people see me as forward thinking or daring at times, I have small versions of nervous breakdowns when change hits too fast or too hard. It all seems so silly that so much of my confidence is wrapped up in what I can control or in what I have set out for myself.

Comme il faut. Comme je veux. Comme j'ai besoin.

I am too scared to take many risks and yet when I finally do, it is one more reason why I don't want to do something like it ever again. I don't have a lot of serious regrets. Mostly youthful follies.

There are a few choices, however, that although I am not sure they can be classified as regrets, were so destructive & difficult to get through that I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn't followed through with them. I know how much they have shaped me and though I am surely wiser, I also know whatever traces of innocence & naivete I had left in my early 20s were shattered.

So while I still maintain my innate sense of romanticism, I have not the drive nor the trust to enter into anything reflecting that side of me.

But this week, with my safety nets down, I've been left vulnerable in a very humbling way. I feel like any pride I had has been stripped out. I am acutely aware of the flaws in myself and the flaws in others. The ugliness of society. The beastly manners of my generation.

I know something better, something brighter exists however and just eludes me for now. Despite any sighs of discontent, I am still hopeful that I am not alone. There are others who see past the literal and mundane acts.