Reflections on the quarter-century mark
by Sean S. Miller
The original submission for this piece was to occur in late summer, when the author’s biological clock struck a quarter century. A week was deemed adequate for the pen to manifest the reflective thoughts of this unique experience, but this was misguided. How can one truly judge 219,000 hours of existence in only 168? The ensuing gap of time has proven to be quite the belated birthday present.
Turning twenty-five in our society is a dichotomy. We have more material benefit, but less intrinsic rewards. More friends, buddies and “pokes” than ever, yet less meaning in our relationships. In essence, as Tenzin Gyatso says, “We have become long on quantity, but short on quality… It's a time when there is much in the window, but nothing in the room.”
Melancholy, contradiction and foreboding grief rest below the surface of many youth today, and I do not believe this is a coincidence. The “greatest generation’s” leading news source, The New York Times, recently offered an illustrative example. They asked the nation’s “best and brightest” college students to answer “what's the matter with college?" (as if anything was wrong). The intellectual justification was posited by political historian Rick Perlstein: “College as America used to understand it is coming to an end.”
The essay’s winner? A twenty-two year-old Yale junior named Nicholas Handler who authored the The Post-Everything Generation. Handler claims our generation “is the generation of the Che Guevara tee-shirt…We are a story seemingly without direction or theme, structure or meaning – a generation defined negatively against what came before us…We rebel by not rebelling.” Yes, we are post-modern, post-environmental and even post-feminist, but we are not “post” ourselves. Herein lays the crucial contradiction.
The world burns, people are tortured and children bombed, and we are supposed to take time “out” for ourselves. Read a book, exercise, or practice yoga, right? Yet when we respond to the cries of the world, we ultimately become overwhelmed. In short, we become the contradiction; we psychologically inherit the “negativity.” This generational inheritance is both our detriment and opportunity. Living this dichotomy, and longing for its escape, is the core of the “post-everything generation” and turning twenty-five. How does one break free from this existential grip? Other than an honest attempt at living, it’s been twenty-five years of convolution. But engaging this dilemma must be a first step, and that’s something we are all getting better at.
Further discussion with Sean, and any solutions, are invited at ssmiller03@gmail.com.
Published March 10, 2008. All rights reserved.