Granted, I make plenty of lifestyle decisions that set me apart (the way I eat, my education, the music I listen to, to some degree even the clothes I wear). I understand those things.
I mean that my entire generation does not belong. We are the misfit coutures in centuries of real living. And I can't believe how it only took a generation before us to completely isolate our lifestyle from the world and yet set the glamorous standard of what is not real. Idolized we are hated. Isolated we are invaded.
And either way, we do not belong. At least, I don't think I do.
I think back to how centuries of people lived. Functioned, breathed, begat, and flourished. Looking back at the centuries and centuries before us, home entertainment existed in conversation and storytelling. Transportation was a huge venture. Hospitals served as merciful women alongside battles. Food could only be made--not purchased while running errands around town. Babies came from mothers. And slept on floors with families.
For centuries and centuries, air was clean. Weather determined life. Washing took place rarely. And soap did not come in bars with lotions in bottles. Industry defined itself as your willingness to work or not. Public health included the presence or absence of sewage in the street.
It probably sounds like I am reminiscing the good days. Harkening to a time of old-fashioned values and inherent purity, but I am not so fooled. Or reminiscent. Just surprised at how centuries and centuries of people lived life in one way and yet with one century (the life of a generation or two) we have revolutionalized it all. And claim to be the only way. The best way. The greatest way. Other countries are pitied, pooh-poohed and anything or anyone not in a car wearing denim and cotton that was born in a sanitary hospital in a metropolitan environment is weird. But it's us.
In a few decades we have redefined life like never before. And though we have yet to see the results, we assert its superiority. I guess I just find that arrogant. And undoubtedly unwise. I look around at us in comparison to the centuries that already were and feel strange. We are strange. I don't want to be so arrogant to say that just because it is, or worse, just because it's ours, it is right. Such thinking is wrong. And I think that's why I feel so strange.
1 comment:
What is so interesting about that particular musing of yours is that our "standards" of what this generation "ought" to have or to rightfully afford in our attempts at affulency (compared to times of old) is that it will not last. Salaries cannot go up with as they have in the past; homes will be more difficult to own (i.e. prices and higher lending standards than before); social security and MediCare are totally screwed over (the latter more so); everyday items will continue to be more expensive even if gas prices go down; and no one in the middle class has enough money to retire, except those with a defined benefit pension, which have been systematically phased out since 1975 with Congress passing ERISA. It will be interesting to see how our generation fares in the future!
A sidenote: I read a bunch of your posts--you are a fantastic writer. I was completely mesmorized by your blogs. Just imagine how you could mesmorize the masses in a larger publication (a collection of short stories or a whole book). I think you've got what it takes!!!
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