Ramblin'
There have been moments recently when I can feel myself being sucked into the rushing river of Responsible Adulthood. For each time that I find myself resisting the trappings of late-twentysomethingness, I feel irrestibly lured by a siren song that offers promises of the ability to experience non-disposable furniture and covered parking. I am a man divided, with a ragged backpack in one hand and an employee health card in the other.
For every friend that has recently bought a condo, there is another paying for a hostel with freelance newspaper stories about Australian dogs, dressed up like Elvis. For each cramped Korean apartment, there is an Ikea bedroom set. Despite my illusions to the contrary, it's no longer the waiting game. The kids are picking their teams, because recess will be over all too soon. House prices are skyrocketing, and biological clocks tick on. Time is of the essence.
The problem is that there is no right answer. There's nothing to say that choosing to do a stint in the real world needs to end with a house in the suburbs and a loveless marriage punctuated by ungrateful children, nor do we know if we'll have any more success finding ourselves in the snow-drenched peaks of the Andes than we would in the checkout line at Loblaws.
Instead, we must rely on our sense of better judgement. This is the same sense of better judgement decided our career at age 17. I think we all know how well that's turned out for everyone.
This would be bad enough, but society has also instilled in us a fierce sense of irrational competitiveness. Not only are we concerned with finding enlightenment and managing our low monthly payments, but we want be most damned enlightened person out there, with the lowest freakin' monthly payments this side of December. And we want it right now.
It's not really anyone's fault. That's just how information works, these days. It's not something that you have to ask for any more. It's just there, whether you want it or not. It's like working alongside the pitched hum of a dying flourescent bulb, or trying to fall asleep with your skin pressed against the flower-covered steel-wool dust cover in a cheap motel. You might as well learn to like it, because you don't exactly have much choice in the matter.
Once upon a time, you were considered to be a true person of intellect if you understood every major scientific, theological, and metaphysical theory. Nowadays, there's more information zipping through the air around you in a single second than you could likely learn in an entire lifetime. Why bother seeking things out for yourself, when it's this hard just keeping up? Who needs to climb a hill to see what's on the other side, when all you need to do is punch it into Google Maps? Especially if all it turns out to be is another set of Big Box stores?
For a generation that's seen everything, often beamed directly into the comfort of our own homes, nothing's exciting anymore. Our frontiers, once dominated by hard-fightin' cowboys, are now the playground of wealthy oligarchs, willing to pay king's ransoms to experience one of the few things they haven't already tried. Fifty years ago, to have finished high school and own a house was to be the model of success. These days, that's barely enough to mark you as one of the herd.
Hence, the rush. If we're going to get out there, we need to do it sooner rather than later. There's scores of people lining up to be dedicated and/or adventurous, and they're all chomping at the bit to prove that they're more dedicated and/or adventurous than we are. If we don't move fast, we're not going to get there until all the cubicle-berthed orthopedic chairs are filled, and the last pygmy village is worshiping their heathen gods under the dull glow of the lights in a Walmart parking lot.
So, did you make your choice?
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I salute anyone who tries to carve out a different path, and who refuses to take their place as another cog in the Conformity Factory. I honour every one of you, those who celebrates their very limited time on this world without appology. Every time you turn off the television to actually speak to one another, or make someone's brow furrow with surprise or mild consternation, know that I am silently cheering for you.
Please, continue to ruffle feathers, be sarcastic, and draw fire from those who don't understand. And for those who manage to balance dedication and adventure on your own time and for your own reasons, know that you will always have special place in my heart.
posted by Ryan @ 9:22 p.m.
2 comments
2 Comments:
Good post.
I think part of the problem is that people try to derive self-worth by comparing very, very superficial things about themselves to their peers: house size, car size, spouse acquisition/attractiveness, and so on. They do this because they've never seriously thought about another, more important metric: comparing themselves to their former selves, in ways which go much deeper than the material.
Am I more compassionate than I used to be? Do I understand myself and my actions more thoroughly? Are my actions more genuine, my thoughts more thorough, my intentions more honest? These are the things that count... not the size of your plasma-screen TV or your wife's bust.
But, to answer these questions, you have to truly look inside yourself, and do some really difficult and thorough evaluation. Unfortunately, we're conditioned not to, because that takes time and effort: why change your eating habits to lose weight when you can just get liposuction? Why bother trying to fix your own marriage when you can read about Brangelina? Why learn about the root causes of a world conflict when you can just distract yourself with Fear Factor and carry on with your life?
God forbid you actually look inside and evaluate who you are as a person (in more than just a doofusy Dr. Phil kind of way).
For a second, I thought you'd written "...not the size of your plasma-screen TV on your wife's bust." All I could think was how awesome that would be.
I think the superficial trappings are an easy measure, which is why they're used so frequently. You can't immediately look at someone and know how fulfilled they are, or whether they have rewarding personal relationships - so we look for hardwood and horsepower, instead.
What gets me is all the quick-fix solutions they've come up with to funnel whatever residual self-discovery we might have once pursued into commercially-productive activities, like self-help books and diet pills. It's easy to get swept up in all the craziness, and I think we're all guilty of it at some point or another.
To a large degree, it's how our society functions - you can't go against a society's expectations all the time, or you'd be exhausted. Imagine sitting down in elevators, or shaking someone's hand for 30 seconds, instead of 1.5 seconds. Everyone would look at you like you were crazy.
It's not easy, trying to find the balance between what we want to do, and what we need to do. Or, in a broader sense, between our desires and our duties. But I think it's important to draw attention to that difficulty. How we choose to attend (or ignore) that balance plays a significant role in how our lives are lived.
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