Angst

Twenty-something, single, semi-professionals are a blight. They are cockroaches that seem to sprout up on Thursday night only to scamper away by Monday morning. They spend the weekend feeding off alcohol and shattered idealism only to be driven back to their support, clerk, or sales positions by the weekday sunlight. Disposable income, a stunted future, and few prospects leave them slaves to the bar scene, cell phones and personal blogs. They all see themselves (and we see them) as different entities:

The Loner
The Chem-dependant
The Sleaze
The Ex-Frat boy
The Emo
The Screamo
The Fake Literati
The True Literati
The Jock
The Film Buff
The Mute
The Looker
The Stalker
The Self Denial Drunk
The Closet Case
The Fag Hag

Plus many more, too numerous to list. All different, but all the same. Throw out a label to see if it sticks and you’ll be right 90% of the time. The problem is… it doesn’t matter. This generation doesn’t want for classification. It lacks purpose, it lacks a calling. I know because I am just as enveloped in it as anyone else. My speech doesn’t separate me from the masses of my peers. I might be a critic or chronicler, but I am in no way walking against the grain. Give me my drink and my alternative music just as you give a babe his teat and his lullaby. Pacified, I am part of the plague.

We have no demigods that are of their own making. We have cultural icons and MTV puppets. We have media moguls telling tweens what is sexy. There are trends being pre-set just like the radio stations on that car you just bought because you saw it on the 150ft billboard. Of course this isn’t revolutionary. We have been bought and sold by media since Cro-Magnon man used blood and excrement to draw cave paintings describing his “two for one” stone wheel sale. The only difference is now the media is so tremendous it envelops itself. Like Ouroboros, it’s living off its own body, yet it still manages to devour us even as it eats its own tail.

How far we have fallen into it is measured by how petty we have all become. We count the friends on out buddy lists and MySpace pages like the Wall Street investment banker counts the figures in a merger. We hone our music and dvd collections like a wine or cigar aficionado. Place an item on its designated rack and suddenly it has cultural and spiritual value. There are even laws and regulations placed upon the digital sound and imagery we once so freely distributed. It’s shocking how quickly a once free sharing of ideas has become big business and marginalized. Right now there are lawyers arguing over who owns the rights to the videos you posted on the internet of your friend passed out drunk on the library steps.

All this consumerism brings me back to the social scene. Our interaction over this expanse of instant media has crippled our growth as social animals. We laugh and love and dine and spend and return to our homes without emotion or sentiment. Emotion is replaced by emoticons and acronyms take the place of feelings. How can this not create widespread listlessness? Empty from soulless living, we fill this hole with booze and products then return to the rat race to earn more and repeat the process. Those who dissent or try to live outside this cycle are seen as a whiny and counter-cultural even by those who agree with the bucking of the system. It’s even more depressing to hear how you and everyone you know is part of the problem… so why bring it up?

But even now I look around and know that I’m not the only one who realizes something is wrong. At night I can feel it. An inner whisper, barely a child’s breath telling me. If I don’t pay attention, it is only a minor distraction. But if I listen… oh if I listen… it’s pervasive like an internal agony throbbing in every vessel. A sharp pain, ever-growing, taking over my every thought, so intense it cannot be ignored. It screams at me:

You are wasting your life.

You are 26 and you are letting the days, months and years dwindle away.

There is something out there, calling, telling you that you should do…

Do what? Be what? Go where? It isn’t specific. It never is. All I know is that I’m not living up to a potential that was set by a person or thing that I may never have known or met, but their presence is felt in the back of my mind. Deep within me, this force pulls at my very being. It shreds away my covers, my masks, my pleasantries. The lies I tell myself and others to get through a normal day of social graces are washed away.

I am left with nothing but my core… and it’s unhappy. It’s restless. And it is trying to find release. But there is no cultural guidance in the wasteland I’ve previously described. Nothing I see or read compels me and nothing I’ve been taught gives me any sort of direction. In this massively connected world, an individual is left alone to wade through the choices that will define their life. Or you can join the rest of your peers and remain in the societal purgatory that is becoming the norm. The holding pattern of the pre-midlife crisis.

Oh, how scared I am. I have already taken the first steps, or been pushed as the case may be, but I have retreated back into the stable, yet fraudulent life I have become accustomed to. I fall back into my group, return to my label and begin to want again. So buy me another round and set my friends up too. Tonight we drink with fear and angst.