“Well the young man, he ain’t got nothing in the world these days.” 

There are things that have been cropping up in my recent life that have made me feel very very old. Weary. Worn, even. 

I don’t mean that I’m suddenly realizing that I’m 26 and I’m disillusioned with the pop culture du jour and the idiotic recklessness of teenagers. I don’t even mean that I stagger in shock when I realize that this year’s college freshmen were born in the 1990’s (although that did throw me for a loop when I first did the math.)

It’s something much deeper than that, something I actually didn’t see coming and would never have guessed about myself if you’d asked me even as recently as a week ago. I feel older than a mere 26 in a number of ways and it seems I’ve undergone a sort of disheartened dropping of the veil that has gradually occurred when I wasn’t paying attention. 

Sometime when I wasn’t looking, I became experienced and a bit more understanding. Of a lot, actually. I woke up suddenly with deeply rooted knowledge of things that my younger self would have balked at and resisted fervently. These days I chuckle at the absurdity of childish mind games I used to spend hours submerged within, I snort mockingly in the face of empty flattery,  I tap the ashes off my mental cigarette and raise an eyebrow in amusement when people believe they’re pulling the wool over my eyes. It’s not so much that I’ve become cynical, because I still have ideals built on wild optimism that I consider to be realistic despite the naivete they might allude to. But moreso that I’ve become both wary and accepting of human nature, relinquishing the desire to change everything and everyone, yet still maintaining optimism that everyone has potential good buried somewhere inside them. 

There’s a certain powerlessness that sets in after the abrupt realization that every person is only guaranteed a one-line synopsis about their identity, their life when it’s all said and done. This realization, of course, sets in motion an obligatory quarter-life (sometimes later) existential crisis in which one’s mind becomes riddled with the “Why am I here?”s and the “What does it all mean?”s. Hell, it’s easy to plummet into despair when one even takes the time to whittle down the true value of themselves even with regards to the people in their immediate lives. It all suddenly becomes overwhelming and usually leads to a lot of denial and postponement in which this person buries him/herself under a pile of bottles or pills or naked bodies or paperwork or credit card bills or possessions, etc. 

But immediately following this pretty typical freak-out is the renewal of power within one’s own personal being. Soon arrives the selfish notion that, if nothing else, your life means the absolute world to your life. It’s all very self-contained and liberating in the sudden detachment this realization provides from the restraints of societal expectations, both from the General Society Planning Committee (not related at all to the Illuminati, or the Dunkin Donuts corporation, by the way. I asked.) and from one’s immediate personal audience (which may or may not include the Illuminati or Dunkin Donuts, based on your particular lifestyle choices. I don’t judge.) Suddenly arises this refreshing independence that allows this newly-awakened person to start considering life from the outside in, which is accompanied by such questions as “What people do I really give a shit enough about to keep around?” and “Why in God’s name do I own all this superficial bullshit?” and “Why am I wasting all my time with thus-and-so?” Naturally following this is the abandonment of taking everyone else’s actions so damned personally and, from this, a whole restructuring of the mind is put into motion and priorities shift and motivations change and yackety schmack so-on-and-so-forth. 

I’m at the place just after that, where the great shift has all taken place, the dust has settled, and now I’m just sitting back, functioning on a slightly higher level of awareness than before, and awaiting the next major adventure/lesson/sale. This is where I’ve set and become comfortable with my standards for my time management, my company, and the energy I spend on both. I’ve made mental agreements about the sort of lifestyles I’ll no longer tolerate, and I’m pretty resolute in the issues and situations I will and will not waste my energy on from now until forever.

Which is why, when I’m taken for a foolish/naive ingenue figure, I can’t help but snort loudly at such an asinine insult to the life I have experienced and the terrifying bullshit I have waded through. (I’m not out proclaiming myself to be some great martyr or survivor of a soul-deteriorating life or anything, but I’ve certainly seen and experienced enough to confidently describe myself as “seasoned”.) However, instead of reeling in offense to these various blatant disregards to my character (or running to my friends to talk smack about my offender) like I would have in my younger years, I’m genuinely only amused by the audacity and ignorance of the person working against me. It’s a weird new trend for me, but instead of sitting around and beating myself up for the stupidity of someone else’s attempted manipulations, I sit back comfortably and quietly smirk at their obliviousness, their cocky certainty in underestimating my awareness. 

I know, this all sounds completely arrogant. Look, it’s not like I spend my days reclining on my laurels, feeding myself grapes on this great pedestal I’ve built for myself or anything. I don’t consciously think to myself “God, I rock. Why can’t all these other little people see that?” and I certainly don’t believe I have anywhere near the amount of Answers I should have to reach true happiness and enlightenment and nirvana. In fact, it’s a rare occurrence when I come right out and admit my capabilities at all. But there is a great amount of self-comfort and reassurance that I’ve recently experienced in being able to see the complete transparency of most people.  It gives me a little unexpected confidence and the new idea that maybe I can start taking care of myself, maybe I do have the wherewithall to hold my own in the inevitability of human drama and general interaction, maybe I don’t have to cling so tightly to people who will swat away emotionally dangerous figures for me.

Maybe, just maybe, I was blessed with two fully functioning legs and a receptive, adept mind that can choose, all on its own, whether I stand my ground or run for my life.   

And if I choose to point and laugh at the idiocy of my antagonist before walking away, then that’s okay, too.

In my ever-present existentialist ponderings, I’ve started becoming ashamed of my inherent need for self-expression. Who the hell am I to write all my thoughts publicly, hoping someone will read them? How arrogant can one person possibly be? It’s narcissism at it’s finest and frankly, it’s pretty sickening to me. 

And then I took a look at our society as a whole and I realized that it seems EVERYONE is too busy trying to showcase themselves to pay any attention to the expressions of anyone else. Facebook and MySpace and Twitter are bad enough (all of which I subscribe to, by the way), but even outside the realm of cyberspace, people are constantly trying to express to you everysinglething about their entire being by wearing it on their sleeves constantly. There’s no mystery anymore. 

For example, what is the deal with people trying to express their entire lifestyle on their back windshield? I’m not just talking about the tree-huggers with cars covered in Coexist, Obama ‘08, and other stickers of general tree-huggery, either. Even suburbanites are jumping on the bandwagon these days by putting little caricatures of their wholeentirefamily (even the dog!) just above a magnet of what school they attend next to a sticker of what church they frequent just below a sticker of their political leaning right above three or four trendy ribbon magnets that show that they support the troops and hate autism and countless other icons of their social relevance. It’s like they’ve created traffic-friendly MySpace pages for each other while they’re waiting in line to pick up their kids. Does this actually work for social networking? Does one soccer mom look at the Dodge Caravan in front of her and note that she has the same USC Class of ‘84 sticker as the mom in front of her and think, “Goodness! I should go introduce myself!” Is my refusal to partake in this sort of public ridiculousness going to hinder my relationships with other mothers when Chloe starts school or are there still people out there who want to get to know each other the old-fashioned way?

And I really do “get” where all this is coming from. For centuries, children were told to be “seen and not heard” and to obey their elders and conform and all that propaganda. So, it’s understandable that when we were finally given permission to finally express ourselves, we went a little nuts with it (hence, the Hippie-Counterculture-through-Punk-Rock Eras… Sorry, I just relate the best with music in social contexts.) We were no longer being forced to be a “Silent Generation” like that of the 1950’s, but were given voices, politically, artistically, and socially.

But this great movement of freedom of expression is a history that the youth of America simply can’t remember. I’d venture to say that the youngest people who remember these sort of mainstream revolutions were those who graduated high school in the early 90’s (”Gen X” as they’re reluctantly referred to) and were an active part of both rap and grunge music being forced into the mainstream (among other things.)

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that there aren’t revolutionaries and great artists, politicians, and thinkers that exist today. Of course there are revolutions and great happenings still going on - just look at our new president. What I AM saying is that this need to express everything about ourselves loudly, publicly, and vehemently in hopes of being “unique” is more than just a little outdated. It’s not shaking people to the core anymore and moving society that people “are just being themselves”. It’s not launching the times forward when someone tries to express themselves to stand out from the crowd. If anything, it’s even more stereotypical and boring to hear young people sitting around obsessing over the image they create of themselves. I mean, yes, fitting into a “goth” or “emo” or “prep” label has always been juvenile and outdated to anyone older than 16, but now it seems like everyone is so busy trying to “redefine” things that we all end up looking like the same exact scrambling, narcissistic, rebel-wannabes that we hate about those participants of adolescent pigeonholes.

I personally used to roll my eyes at the self-prognosed “Goth” kids in high school stating, “Yeah yeah, you’re an ‘individual’ just like eeeeverybody else in your little group.” Slowly I’ve realized I’m sitting in the pot, too. Except this time there are no walls of one singular academic building holding us all in. It’s all of us, running around grappling for Truth and having to show every second of it to the world/cyberspace in hopes that this will finally validate ourselves, our ideas, our mistakes, our attire, ourselves… Not even considering that this constant self-exposure may be making us even more stereotypical and identical. That, in always “speaking our minds” and blogging our feelings and always showing off our lives and deeper selves [shamelessly] to the public, we’re still desperately clinging on to these rigid ideals that most of us were trying to escape in the first place. We are just calling it by a different name which doesn’t redefine ourselves, but only redefines what it means to “conform”. Suddenly, the unabashed thoughts and unrelenting “expression” of us as a generation becomes pretentious, meaningless blathering as we flood the market with our own “unique” personality traits and we become as predictable, boring, and irrelevant as Madonna’s changing identity.

Kinda makes me want to disappear into obscurity forever, really.

I’ve been having a bit of an existential dilemma recently…so much so that I’m halfway expecting Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin to start digging through my trash. About once a day for the last two months, I’ve started looking around at all my things and my life and my actions and wondering “What is the point of all this?” and, even as I’ve progressed past the crippling depression that was holding me captive again for a while, this thought continues to plague me daily.

I know; sounds like too much work for a Friday afternoon. Imagine having all the following notions flood your mind at least once a day for a couple months. (Now, imagine that with poopy diapers being changed and baby toys strewn about your living space and that’s my life.)

I don’t mean to sound pretentious, either, but in the last few months I’ve started feeling genuinely awkward and confused when I receive gifts because I’ve been strangely bothered by consumerism and the desire to have/possess things. I can’t appreciate a fabulous pair of shoes anymore or even how someone “saved so much” on a fabulous new handbag. It all just seems so trite, like we’re owning things to cover up the realization that we have no idea what the hell is going on. And then it seems like that’s why we do anything. Because we have no idea what it is we’re here for. Some people busy themselves with working on their social status because they’ve somehow agreed that this gives our lives meaning. Others work to acquire wealth because that seems to give their lives meaning, others work to help others because that seems to give them a sense of purpose, some cloud their lives with causes to benefit others because that fills the void, many attempt to fling their lives into public view in order to validate their existence, many others seek the rush of intoxication to give them the bright feeling of manufactured bliss… It all just seems like we’re creating distractions from just being. Because at the end of the day, all that can be taken from us and then, what really is the point of being?

It’s like, for the last few months, my mind has been muddied with these thoughts every day and I’ve tried to brush them aside, but they keep coming back to haunt me. It makes me wonder what selfish, distractive motivation I have to keep writing my thoughts on a public blog, for example. Do I do it so that I can make my name more recognizable and therefore validated? Do I do it because I’ve always written and this is just a way of databasing my thoughts and life? Do I write at all because I have anything to say and what exactly is the element that makes my writing worthwhile? For that matter, what is it that makes anyone’s writing worthwhile? What is it that makes anyone’s life important, validated, productive? Can’t be happiness; many people never find that. Can’t be creativity or innovation; many people are remembered who aren’t creative or innovative at all. Can’t be notoriety; some of the most important people who ever existed are those who were never documented publicly.

Is the point of existing to build a reality that we’re peaceful existing within? That just seems so self-servicing, even if our existence is to serve others…What about those people who live life just to exist on the bare essentials; are their lives somehow more pure and optimistic than those of us caught up in “mattering” and “having purpose”? Is pondering the meaning of life just one of those things that Westerners made up because we’re bored in our own luxuries? Should I get rid of all the luxuries my society/culture have agreed are so important and necessary so I no longer have to deal with wondering why in the hell I’m on this planet to begin with?

Yes, these are the thoughts that creep into my mind daily. These are the ones that make me look at my life and go “Eh. There has to be something deeper, something more than what I’m just looking at or living within right now.” And yeah, they’re exhausting. I go between wondering if the point of being around is to help others and thinking myself extremely selfish for wasting my life taking care of myself and wanting a career and cultivating an art and procreating, to thinking that maybe the point of life is self-sustainability, to thinking that none of our individual concerns matter and that we should all work to become more communal and blissful within each other’s company, as per the Native American civilizations. And lemme tell you, my mind is easily changed at least seven hundred times daily.

My problem with just not letting things “be” is that that seems purposeless as well. That seems cowardly and indecisive, like those people who are agnostic simply because they’re too lazy to explore any sort of spirituality at all (I’m NOT saying all agnostics are like this, by the way.) There’s a very large part of me that believes that “I don’t know” is too apathetic a way to live a life. But then, there’s another part of me that knows that there’s something very peaceful and surrendering about living in the “I don’t know”.

I like to think I live in the “I’m not sure, but I’m still looking.” I think that might be the healthiest way for me to exist, because it means I’m likely to keep a sense of humility about me and I’m likely to continue growing. I’ve honestly never trusted people who think they have it all figured out, because that just seems too cocky and ignorant to me. I gravitate toward people who are ever-searching, never-settled, ever-moving.

But still, I wonder why this curiosity has been piqued recently and why it isn’t just sitting in the background of my thoughts where it usually does. Because frankly, a break from redefining my core values thrice daily would be really nice.