We always compare up, we never compare down. What we have is never enough when others have more. What we can do and have accomplished is not acceptable when there are individuals better than ourselves. We are within the 5% nationally, well within the 1% globally. The lower 95%+ don’t matter to us. We’re at the bottom and can only see upward. All we want to do is climb.
We dream about the future, we agonize about the past, but we can’t allow ourselves to live in the present. Waiting, wishing, and escaping for a few fleeting moments out of the year, we are prisoners locked behind ideals. As unbearable as it is, we are paralyzed by the thought of throwing it all away. We are saving and working for a future we will hate, paving a road of constant regret.
Working for world class companies but never excelling. Making an upper middle class income in high cost areas and still feeling impoverished. Knowing an amazing amount about various subjects but never enough to be an expert. Creating overlooked, above average art. Building a network of professional and casual acquaintances without developing close relationships.
Accepting mediocrity; resolving to be just another face lost in the crowd, another name drowned in the seas of history.
Our dreams diverge faster and further from our realities. We’ve got all of the tools but not enough talent, not enough drive, not enough time. Hoarding instruments and equipment gives us hope where it should remind us of our failure; the neglected guitar, the dusty piano. One day, someday, sooner or later… later. Somebody else will have to smash my guitar when I’m gone and my dreams have died with me.
We never stop moving around. Rushing from place to place, we develop casual relationships with cities. One year, two years, interspersed with journeys to the furthest corners of the country, continent, globe.
We’re internationally raised, culturally immunized, endlessly searching for a place to belong only to find another place to escape.
We are the new hobos, transient by choice. We have no home, only temporary residence. We can’t stop moving around. We belong nowhere. We must go everywhere.
I have a dream that one day I will live up to my aspirations and not waste every moment on things of no value.
I have a dream that one day all of my time won’t be spent basking in the glow of a computer monitor.
I have a dream that one day I will live without constant regret.
I have a dream.
I have lots of dreams.
All I ever do is dream.
We’re scared. They expected us to inherit the world but they forgot to tell us how to run it. Society keeps getting more and more complex as our interactions within it get stretched thin. We’re barely functioning; confused, afraid, and seeking guidance from a generation who has indulged themselves to death.
Information overload.
Stimulation desensitization.
Detached, through the eyes of our drones we see everything but experience nothing. By the flickering light of our monitors we frantically broadcast to everybody but reach no one. We read headlines, we write in solitary sentences, we distort our photographs to make our lives look less bleak. We have endless aspiration and zero motivation.
There are lines forming on our faces while a child still lives in our heart. We’re terrified of death but too scared, distracted, and apathetic to live. We are in our third decade. We are a lost generation.
