generation Us: "Time not enough"

I know, I'm kind of boring. Always rambling on about the same old thing : Graduation, work, life blah.. But then sometimes, yeah it is worrying. I don't know why, maybe it is our generation. Maybe it is just me. But then there is this unspoken anxiety that we have to try to make something of ourselves. Maybe it is the unspoken expectations of parents', all their years of grooming, providing us with more than the basic neccessities. How they will tell us we are all so lucky to be born in this generation, this century, this time in history. Whatever. We all secretly want to do something that matters, if not to the society or the world at large, at least for ourselves. To have a life, a job that matters. To be happy, to be successful, to do meaningful things. yeah, maybe every generation wanted the same, but the pressure to get above, or to say something worthwhile, do something worthwhile seems to get increasingly heavier on us and the people after.

Why fear graduation? Why fear that we might not find a job we love? something we care for? Are we idealistic? Afraid that all the myths we have built up around ourselves about how if we work hard enough we will succeed? Because, I think the answer is yes. Maybe we are the people caught in between the idealistic vision of success in the past and the disillusionment of reality of life. Maybe once upon a time, having a degree garuntees success, what our parents generation learnt as part of their wisdom that they impart to us but by now has become a fiction. What we see as the dream of upward mobility that our parents demonstrated when we were kids, and we also saw the demise of the "iron rice bowl". We saw the crisis of our parents at middle age. How economic structure changes everything but not mindsets. Because I'm still amazed that my dad tells me that everyone needs a degree, even now. They genuinely tell you that there is a way to succeed, but to you the path just seems blur.

Insecurities coupled with the desire to get somewhere explains alot of the insecurities of people I see around me. Whilst in the past, maybe our parents have the goal of providing a better life for their children, when it comes to us, we are left with no clear purpose but to make a better life for ourselves, to make sense. We already have most of what we need, but then how do we explain the emptiness alot of younger people face? Mild dissatisfactions that cannot be put into words. Logically, we should be very happy and confident. BUt then the question is "Why aren't we?" Is it a simple problem of personal self esteem at stake? Or is there something more here? How do we explain why most people have that fear in their eyes that they might have wasted time, taken the wrong path, for fear that it was time wasted and would not get them where they want to get in life? Why take history? Why? HOw would it get you where you want to go? What do you want to do? It is the anxiety I always have to come to terms with everytime someone asks me those questions.

Impatience to succeed, and fear of taking detours, maybe symptomic only of people around me. I still get people telling me that I must make the most of my youth? And the fearful sight of people in their 20s claiming that they feel very old. We are very young, but we feel very old. It perhaps speaks of the anxieties most of us have unconsciously ingrained through the economic experiences of our parents. As if 40s sees the end of possibilities. This leaves us only 20 years to accomplish something worthwhile for ourselves. Why do we feel old? Why do we feel pessimistic about aging? It is unique to our generation. My parents spoke of general optimism of their 20s and 30s. Why is it that at the beginning of what is supposed to be our first genuine step into the world out of the education system which have been sheltering us, we feel so insecure? So afraid that we will not have the time to make something before the onslaught of middle age? When we are so much better equiped than our parents and our grandparents. We have our next meal, we have been educated. I think it is a puzzle.

If I say life is a continous process, a learning experience that does not end, but only keeps going, then how do I explain the anxieties people have towards aging. Because the fear of growing old is not universal and timeless. Aging sometimes meant empowerment. Perhaps,because increasingly wisdom collected through life becomes increasingly obsolete. What was true only a day before, might no longer be the next. What old folks have to say about anything becomes just another outdated load of information that we can not store. Maybe that is why we feel that we have to say something here and now while it is relevant. No, I should rather say while WE ARE relevant. But then if I really do buy into this, perhaps I'm doing the very same here. Why even bother writing anything at all if it will become another outdated view of the world. But like everyone will always be a product of their own time and place. The same can be said of our Generation. We are all products of our time, but being caught in such a time as a kind of transition block, we might need to reconcile alot of conflicts we have ingrained, and instead of chosing between the two fictions, we might need to make our own. Living our own fiction instead of trying to adhere to those put down by people before us. But then you'll wonder, if what I'm saying might perhaps be another kind of idealism: that we can indeed break out of our own context. BUt as for now, I would much rather be optimistic: I'm young, and there are possibilities (not to be found, but to be created).