Reflecting on my generation

A ladder rung up from our parents, who challenged and set alight so much that was already decaying on its throne. We live on their successes, material and psychic, yet we loose ourselves in them as well, swirling into the comfort of amiable home and the platitudes of over-education tempered with over explanation of all our inner woes. A tribe of people gifted and heart-broken, reckless and yet self-fascinated standing on the shoulders of a revolution against that which was all too obviously egregious. Where are our battles? On the inner landscape we all choose sides, and crowding together, collectively forgive one another our differences and descend ever onward into either deeper pits of self-reflection, or more fragile glass houses of success than ever our forebears imagined.

I see the best minds of my generation everyday, on their facebook pages. Happy just to craft themselves, happy to be free of the responsibility that comes with crafting the future. We are outside our professions, mainly, and exist to see one another again, and feel whole thereby. This sad little episode in humanity, this terribly deep upward striving, this happiness that urges ever to be let out, this peace that only knows the reflection of itself. All our arts are tired from the struggle, and we find beauty only in the admiration of each other; the diamond in my neighbor’s eyes is the crown upon my head, if only I had the courage to posses it, to be responsible for it, to tend it toward good or ill. Not yet are we forced to develop ourselves, and we are left with gifts of the heart that remain there, and beg to be released, stumblingly, in heart-wrenching episodes that leave us too tired to try once more, too exposed to live in totality as we are. Our last chance, I fear, is coming, and I fear because I am as guilty as everyone else, and I fear because it is almost just about too late. We all have the capacity to achieve so much good. if time still remains, if only we try.

Painting: Jacob's Ladder - William Blake