“We are a part of a generation called the Millennials. Have you heard of that?” I asked my class of 18-20 years this morning in my Intro to Soc discussion section. Andrew was sitting straight up sleeping with his mouth open and Meagan was grasping onto her purse waiting for me to set the class free. They all looked vacant, unmotivated and uninspired.
“OK, well, let me put it to you this way… we are a generation of self-praising, self-agrandizing, nearly intolerable, short-attention spanned Lost Boys never wanting to grow up. Do you agree?” I asked, preying someone would at least show a sign of life.
“Fine. You have no opinion. You have no thoughts swimming in your head except for the fact that it’s 8:30 and you want to go back to sleep. So, I’ll just leave you with this thought: We are the generation of Meta. OK, bye.” And I let them go. I was disappointed. Here I was clearly highlighting our generation’s main struggle. Our “meta-ness”, our inability to commit to anything beyond our current scope. Maybe they are still too young to fully acknowledge the emotional, societal and philosophical murk we’ve been left to trudge through to make it to the Emerald City of “adulthood”. Illustrious, mythical adulthood.
That’s where I’m at. I stand in the pinnacle of both self-awareness and utter self-confusion. I’m aware of my confusion and conversly, aware of my inabilities to progress. This compass is out of control. My talisman that is the key to adulthood is slippery, transparent and requires passwords of great wisdom, yet humility.
And this is the beauty of this point in time. The sheer Meta-ness. I’m saying everything, yet nothing at all. I often say as I writer, I find myself both inspired and wholly frustrated at the impossibility of complete mind-to-word translation. I just said a lot of things, yet it talking about thinking about things.
Meta.
Nothingness.
Gets you no where practically. Meta-ness is useful in only getting you deeper into the foggy, epistemic murk.
