To Be Young

Youth is wasted on the young, many say. But how true is it? From my experiences in the year since graduating college, unfortunately it seems to be very true, particularly if 30 years old and under still constitutes as young. So why is it that most people seem to be so myopic that they waste their early days enjoying themselves, and the next 40-50 years suffering through work life, family life, and everything in between? I don't have an answer, but I have some thoughts on the subject:

College was and is the strangest experience of most people's lives. In no other time are you surrounded solely by people your age, with no proper barometer how to behave aside from your own voice of reason and perhaps the behavior and opinions of a few close, trusted friends. Only in college does being ambitious, driven, and thinking outside the box tend to lead to immediate disappointment. You begin to learn too soon that the world moves in crowds, and trying to stray away from it will lead to frustration, adaptation, and serious philosophical consideration of your place in the world and the value you can bring - and take - to and from it. For many, I believe, this attitude arises in our 18-22 years and implants itself firmly in the mind, so that every decision thereafter has some sort of consideration of how it might come across or whose attitudes it might not be in line with. I find this to be especially true today, where so many young people seek instant gratification, and FOMO is a part of a culture that - whether you choose to pay attention to it or not - affects many decisions that people make, from their social life to professional life and beyond. This may seem like a petty observation, but I believe it is far from it.

In our media-driven world, we see young people get famous all the time, mostly for all the wrong reasons. However, because we are inundated with information about those more fortunate than us, we simply cannot realize how much hard work (and on a smaller scale luck) it takes to get in the spotlight, to a place where people know your name, know what you represent, and buy into it - something I see more and more people aiming for in life. Rather than choosing to live a life that deserves praise, they choose to lead a life that brings praise, two mindsets that could not be more different in 2014. Or, there is the other side of the spectrum, where those less fortunate (and certainly not as hard working) believe that those lucky few are inherently special, due to some sort of character trait, fate, or simply because the people who believe this are not considering what the person might have been doing before everyone knew who they were. We put people up on a pedestal, and thus they remain on the pedestal, simply because much of the world chooses to let them stay there. Again, in a world where advertising rules, this is egregious, and the separation between successful and failing are world's apart, like two sides of a coin that can never overlap.

As a child lucky enough to be born and grow up within New York City, specifically Manhattan, I was exposed to some of the greatest successes in the world, and had the fortune of being around some of the hardest working, most intelligent, and yes, lucky people on the planet - people many believe would give them the opportunity to make something of themselves, if only they could somehow swing a face-to-face with the person. Perhaps this is why I see so much wrong with our society, where people let others, and even worse the past, dictate their current behavior. Thinking we don't have agency and saying so does nobody any good, least of all the person claiming it. In a nation acting as the home of the brave and the land of the free, people are awfully stubborn about following rules, whether it benefits them or not. I believe this is the root of the issue in terms of the lack of hard work I see from day to day, and the lack of interest most people have in actually changing their lives, despite their constant pleas for something more. We may want to leave the rabbit hole, but almost all of the time, staying inside feels safer, more truthful, and simply easier - rather than taking a risk, many of us settle, and adapt an attitude of "this is the way it is" when that statement in and of itself is invalid, specifically because "the way it is" is drastically different to the various people who are perceiving it.

The defense mechanism of "that's the way it is" has and will never lead to innovation, success, and progress, and while this attitude is obviously fading away, we are far from a point where everybody can see their own agency, and their own path towards impacting the world, rather than merely filling the roles and repeating the mistakes that people who lived and died before them. Having your own unique point of view, living life your way, while of course adapting to the world in other people's minds, is not something I see enough of. People may argue against me, and claim that with the rise in digital media, and the emergence of the "Information Age," people can and do communicate themselves to the world however they want. If this is what most people truly believe, I have to rudely say I feel sorry for them, because everybody using the same social media platform and liking the same things as other people is NOT a form of being independent: it is instead a way to value yourself by something physical, that which you absorb, consume, and then share said consumption of with others. And if there is a sadder way to find your place in the world, I don't know what it is. Instead of valuing thought and morals, we value action and results - this makes sense, it "keeps the world turning" if you will, but when does innovation stop meaning progress? When does being able to communicate with someone across the world, face to face, live and in real time, lead to us sitting in front of screens, never seeing other human beings in the flesh? I don't know about you, but I still value a good old-fashioned handshake very highly.

I might seem awfully hypocritical, spilling my thoughts on out a blog, but it is better than what I see many others do. I carry no second agenda with this, no ulterior motive, other than to stake my claim in the world a little bit more. I wish I could say this out loud to someone, but I have not found anyone yet who would give me the time to use this many words - they would lose interest too fast, what with their ability to constantly be distracted, to constantly be doing something, anything, except ruminating in their own mind and really thinking about their place in a world that they are by nature the center of. Rumination is sometimes said to be devil's work, a useless time-waster when more productive things could be happening. But is it not of the utmost importance for true personal growth? If we went from moment to moment without considering our actions, how they made us feel, and how they might make others feel, we risk losing connection with the very thing that connects us - a collective unconscious, emphasis on the "UN." We live in a physical world, but we are not connected physically - how else could you explain the feeling one feels at a live concert, when they could swear everyone around them was feeling the very thing they were? If we do not work when we are young, we risk losing sense of ourselves, and our potential importance in this world, no matter how mundane. Instead of sharing what we do, why not share who we really are? Not the guy or girl who makes funny faces, or who likes The Sopranos but cannot bring himself to love Boardwalk Empire, but the person whose heart melts every time they hear a saxophone, or cries when they are driving down the highway, alone, with nothing but the wind and the open road to focus on? Perhaps by becoming blank slates, and letting the world and our work bounce off of us from the time we graduate college (or for some, high school) we may surprise ourselves, discover just how powerful having our own agency can be, forget about all the petty things we use describe ourselves, and realize that we are all worth something much greater together than apart. Perhaps we can come to understand each other not for our likes or dislikes, but for our very beings, that which cannot be put into words, thoughts, actions or anything. Enjoy the moment for the moment's sake, not because of what came before or after; take company for company's sake, and appreciate the fact that with collaboration and acceptance, anyone can do anything they desire, particularly if the desire is more spiritual and emotional than anything else.


FIN