The Fickle World of a 20 Something.

It has recently come to my attention how fickle I have become. Even at the now grand old age of 26 I am something of a dithering fool. I am plagued by indecision everywhere I go, suddenly every choice I make feels like it could be the be all and end all of an ideal I cling to. I am stuck at a crossroads with hundreds of paths I could walk down, but if I turn down one, will I loose my way to the others?

It is a common phrase; your twenties are the best time of your life, it is perhaps this expectation that is so debilitating. If my twenties are the best time of my life, perhaps I am living them all wrong. I am muddled by questions and decisions, to the point that even deciding  what to wear every morning is a palaver! Who thought deciding which shoes to wear could take a giant leap and become thoughts of what am I really doing with my life, but there you have it, boots or flats are now the grand philosophical questions of the day. 

So I sit on my metaphorical roundabout; I imagine there is a bright red swing set I sit on while I ponder these great questions, that in itself may just be thought procrastination, pushing myself higher and higher as if hoping the dizzy heights will give me some sort of profound clarity, while the rest of the world zooms past with what feels like drive and determination.

Am I really the only one who is lost? Am I all of a sudden devoid of the resolve I thought I had? Am I really so afraid of failure I can no longer find the courage to try? If I don’t make the most of my twenties will I be plagued with regret for the rest of my life? And how exactly do I make the most of my twenties? Do I use this time to be free and experience life? Or do I set the foundations for my future? What if I lay foundations in the wrong place and forever destroy something that could have been? How do I keep all these thoughts in my head? They feel like they are falling out of my ears in streams of gibberish and causing floods of emotions, indecision and plain hysteria. And the biggest question I find myself desperately trying to pick apart; when did life get so serious?

It's difficult to realise your life is nothing more than a tangled ball of wool; too many threads that look like they will untangle the mess but in reality they pull some places too tight and leave even more ends unanswerable. And that maybe life wont be what I had planned when I was 5; I am pretty sure becoming an astronaut is out of the question. But perhaps something better will come along. And until then, if you want me, look for me on the days I feel lost, wrapped in my duvet watching movies I am ashamed to have on my 'recently watched on Love Film Instant' list. 

Restless

Restless. London makes me feel restless. In a city with so much possibility it is easy to become lost amidst desires to succeed and stand out. I find myself desperate for both; success and recognition.
They don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. I want success in life, which for me means a career I can be proud of. This desire inspires me to write. In dribs and drabs mostly, but I am still writing almost everyday. The key here is consistency; one day I will have a portfolio to be proud of; hopefully stuffed with both published masterpieces and glimpses of genius in the form of tidbits, scribbles and doodles. It's a long road, particularly from the perspective of a 25 year old who is only a year into her first office job and a year and a half out of university. But, clutching my two degrees, desperately trying to make my mark in the workplace, while simultaneously charging down the bull that is living in London, I find myself, oddly, restless.

But restless for what? As far as I can work out, I am craving success and that desire is overwhelming. That's the thing about desire, you can never tame it, even by filling your life with this, that and the kitchen sink. If you want something else, that something else burrows into your conscious, ruining your concentration with a vice grip to rival Darth Vader, grasping at every idea that breaks free. Even as I sit here writing this I am wondering if there isn't more I could be doing to fulfill my childhood dreams.

I find the only way around this restless desire is to just roll with it. I do something new, different and impulsive. Although, I will warn you, reacting to the restless feeling with rash decisions is addictive, similar to the adrenalin junkie who throws himself (or indeed herself) out of a plane for kicks. You might find yourself dying your hair red, saying yes to a date you weren't really sure was a good idea or waking up in a different town than the one you started the day in....

This is where recognition and success fork into two parallel yet entirely separate paths. Recognition for my life's work is obviously something I crave. But, the dream you have of your funeral and what people would say about you (don't judge me here everyone does it...I am not a crazy person, in this respect at least), my unconscious fills itself with people who remember the things I have done that brought them happiness. The recognition I want, is happiness. Alright, now you can laugh.

In all seriousness, recognition for me is the moment you are remembered by a complete stranger for a kind gesture, or a friend for the laughter you bring, induce or even exclaim. Happiness is greater than hope, fame or even success, for the simple reason that it means more everyday. That feeling of a balloon swelling in your chest when you think of another, be it friend, family or lover. That grin you can't suppress, even on the tube when it makes you look like a complete nut, those are the moments to be proud of because for some reason for most people, happiness is secondary.

I guess the conclusion I have come to, stumbled across in these ramblings, is that success comes with hard work, but recognition, for me at least, is about making the most of your life, and doing it with as much openness as I can muster. At least that way, I will be remembered....even if it is only as that nut who never stopped smiling.

The Lost Generation

'The Lost Generation'

The heading they have given my generation (recent graduates); the Lost Generation, is spot on. There is a struggle in the job market; fighting for jobs and against dwindling account balances, and a struggle for every graduate to remain optimistic. It is difficult to sell yourself when you fear you have left yourself in a difficult position spending thousands of pounds and years of your life developing skills for your future life that coming out the other end appear obsolete in the eyes of employers.

I work in Starbucks currently and 90% of my colleagues are students, both current and recent graduates. We are told we are the lucky ones; we have a steady income. A consequence of this position, however, is falling off the unemployed radar. This type of steady employment also puts us in a difficult position because we cannot put ourselves forward for temp-work because we work full time, we can't attend last minute interviews, and we cannot start work immediately. The list is endless and becomes a mess of lethargy and frustration.

Would it be better to live as a ‘temp.’ uncertain of income from week to week, or stay put in a job that is at least consistent. Do you leave yourself with gaps in your CV you later have to justify. Or continue in a role that could be considered unworthy and unimportant by some employers? Do we keep pushing applications in the vain hope we will get a response, even a rejection is better than the empty space of an e-mail inbox. Or do we push for short scraps of work experience we can squeeze into holiday and days off in the hope somewhere in the hours of labour we willingly undertake lies a glimmer of prospect?

The real question we have to keep asking is; have you go it in you? Can you ride this wave to its uncertain conclusion while balancing your hopes and dreams against the drag of reality?

The lost generation; we are the people who serve you your coffee and epitomise the catch 22; you have to have experience to get a job but to get experience you need a job. Our experience usually doesn't fit on our CV. It’s the bit between the lines where we lived and breathed a life of passions, personal and academic. We lived, made mistakes (a lot of mistakes) and learnt in the process. We are a generation of battered individuals trying our damndest to make something, anything of ourselves in a world desperate to legitimise us, and in the process itself.

Don’t get me wrong, our breaks do come; there is hope. The fight is predominately with ourselves: our personal belief, resilience and patience. We demand better of ourselves- waiting to begin the life we promised ourselves was achievable once we were graduates.

And there we stand, willing a change of our fortunes, and doing our utmost to achieve it. We are not the ‘Lost Generation’ because we sit in front of the TV watching Jeremy Kyle day after day; we are the Lost Generation because we have emptied our lives into every corner of reality grasping at the promise of success.

Pessimism and Indifference

'Freedom injustice and all that crap people write about with no substance they don't know what they are talking about' - Sussex University Toilet 24th May 2010

Things like this always make me wonder if this person was writing out of pessimism or indifference? Do they not care that the world seemingly has no substance surrounding the question of freedom and injustice? Or is it that they think that there is no point writing about these things because the world as no clue? As subtle as the difference here is its important to realise that either way who ever wrote this wont be doing anything about what they consider to be the tragedy of the present. Which in turn makes me think, what exactly was the point of writing that in the first place? Are you trying to sound like an intellectual and make some poignant statement of the state of philosophy and politics which sounds very insightful but in-fact lacks any real meaning whatsoever? Or are you just angry at the world around you and yet unwilling to do anything about it? Again the divergence between these two questions is slim and it still boils down to the fact that the very statement made is tautological. The girl who wrote it is claiming that the world has no understanding of the concepts of Freedom and injustice and yet is doing nothing but perpetuating this by stating this as fact and then doing nothing to change it.

This is the state of affairs in a university today, the feeling of ambivalence of the conditions of social, political and philosophical understanding combined with the pessimism and indifference that means the ambition to do anything about this falls short and culminates in the writing of bitter meaningless statements in a toilet cubicle.

The irony here is that by protesting against this i am perpetuating they very thing that has encouraged me to protest. I am encouraging the tautology of indifference by vehemently protesting against the indifference. We might end up going in roundabouts here so i will just say that indifference is sustained by the pessimism that is incited by statements of indifference. So what exactly can we do, as students, to be honest even just as a member of this society? We write. We put down on paper in anyway possible our despair, but not only that, we also read. We read about the philosophy of Freedom and injustice, we read newspapers and books, and watch the world through documentaries. We come up with our OWN ideas. 

This stalemate between voicing an opinion and really taking a stand, lies in the worlds demand for instant information, resulting in our being spoon fed what we are demanding to understand, there by we are no longer understanding we are just regurgitating fact. I am sitting here trying on my own to change this, by reading and learning and hoping that others of my generation are tired for the same reasons and are doing the same. For really what is the world without trying to understand it? You can live from day to day and the world will still bumble along as it has, but the problems in the world will not be solved if we do not demand an understanding of them. You cannot fix the present problems with the knowledge of the past alone, for it is by way of the past that the problems came about in the first place.

You cannot tackle the state of indifference by regurgitating the very reasons for its being.

So here is my suggestion...pick up a book and work it out for yourself, you never know what might happen.

Musings of the Soul

"I want to wish you well, I didn't watch you go 'cause i suppose i don't know how, I will remember you, not the way you left, but how you lived and what you knew." - Wish You Well- Katie Herzig

Love, an emotion people either claim holds great powers, or doesn't exist at all. It baffles, infuriates, and infatuates the human race. Individuals appear either desperate for love, despondent or in total denial. We find ourselves torn apart and put back together by the universal concept of love. It manifests as what people describe as unmissable emotional turmoil where by you can't live without someone.

According to Nietzsche, in his reflections upon man, 'the views we take of ourselves depend only to a slight extent upon what we actually are and do; for the most part they are suggested to us by others.' In this way those around us shape our identity, and obviously most definitively by those we let close enough to see our 'true' selves. The self that is usually repressed in the everyday, that comes out in burst of emotions too great to suppress. That is love, the feeling that a balloon is about to burst in your chest happiness, the sadness that makes your sob and profess that nothing will ever be the same again. But then again that could just be the exaggeration of a hopeless romantic soul.

Again, according to Nietzsche love is the sublimation of the sex drive. Which when you take into account the rush of companionship, certainly for the majority of the human race, that comes from a moment of intimacy makes a great deal of sense. But can you really level love down to a chemical balance in the brain and a rush of hormones? Or is that in fact, the lower regarded, feeling of lust? But that question opens up an entirely new kettle of fish concerning the importance of one above another in partnerships.

But i guess, what it really comes down to, for me at least, is, what d you want from love? Or, in not such a great leap, from life? You could spend all your days pondering the extent love exists, or you could spend your life orbiting around those who not only encourage your own happiness, but create a sphere of love you could never have dreamed of.

Humanity as a social being

Philosophy has sought for thousands of years to define the human being by its locality in the nature of reality. Are we animals or something greater? Aristotle defined the human as an inherently political animal. Hegel catagorised human reality in levels of social and political relationships, State, Civil society and family, and by the time critical theorists had come about in the early 20th century Freud had removed the individual from his surroundings and catagorised his being by his on psychological being, Superego, Ego and Id. In all of these categorisations the individual is isolated. This isolation is without a doubt the source of our confusion.

In what sense are we solitary creatures? Our lives are built around close relationships, marriage and family. These 'groups' may have been progressively institutionalised and in many respects considered bourgeoise and conservative, but the core reasoning is there, support. Whether it is heterosexual or homosexual marriage [even in the respect of a long term relationship] partnership is the very thing every character spends their lives seeking; love is the obsession of the human race. In a similar tone, traditional, extended or in the modern sense a group of friends, family is a central tenant to the life of an individual. We cannot live and function on our own. Even our intellectual development, our growth from the day we are born to the day we die is controlled, constructed and stimulated by interactions.

Simmel, in his 1908 essay The Catagories of Human Experience, states "The human species could just as well have been unsocial; there are unsocial animal species as well as social ones. Because of the fact of human sociality, however, we are easily misled into thinking that categories which directly or indirectly are sociological ones are the only, and universally applicable, categories in terms of which we may contemplate the contents of human experience." [Georg Simmel On Individuality and Social Forms, Selected writings, edited and with an introduction by Donald N. Levine pp36] Here, however, i have to state my critique of Simmel's analysis of the human species. I believe we are inherently social beings, that our interactions with others is above any critical growth or institutional construct of the capitalist world, the source of happiness and thereby the truth in existence. For the highest purpose of anyones life is to find and offer happiness. Critical theorists, the philosophers of the 20th century, were confronted by the sense of humanities isolation. The decay of theological dogma had, rather than liberating the human being, clouded over the knowledge that had defined its purpose. Consequently, the human species was left to its own devices in a reality without a sense of limitation and our narcissism grew.

Here is the point we find ourselves in, dominated by a sense of personal self-worth our relationships can be considered of secondary importance. Not only those of close friends and family, but with everyday acquaintances. If you have ever had a stranger be unnecessarily rude to you this will make perfect sense, we no longer take care of our demeanor towards the world because they are less important than we are. Ever considered this is the source of numerous social problems? That in-built hostility towards others can't do any good for anyone. Imagine how nice it would be to be able to walk though life without a sense of tension towards others. Obviously this is a Utopian concept, but a little stretch of consideration for others, a smile or even just walking with an air of openness will go a long way. Try it, walk with your head held high and a smile on your face, I would bet you make someone's day.

All this Politics Jargoon

Its about that time again, Thursday is the big day, we get to change the structure of our little country.

But I'm sure most people are aware, even if it is just an inbuilt cynicism, that this isn't strictly the case, our votes no longer count as one vote per person, we are a percentage not a single entity. [Check out this website to see what percentage you actually count:www.voterpower.org.uk].

The system is flawed, politics has moved on and first past the post has evoked a sense of compromise in the form of tactical voting, a process which essentially defeats the concept of democracy. Compromise on a vote is cancer for democracy. 

I would love to say i had an idea of how to improve the system, or even that if I did have one we could some how implement change, but I am, like most of the rest of the population, overcome with the sharp sting of indifference, I am so firmly aware of my personal insignificance it is hard to muster a sense of political activism. Don't get me wrong,I am going to vote and I am going to vote for the MP I believe is best suited for the job [this rant would be entirely hypocritical otherwise, be the change you want to see and all that], but I am acutely aware that there is a lingering tension around the validity of such a decision. 

The debate rests today on the ability of a hung parliament to carry the country out of the recession. History tells us that the likely hood of this is slim, however, as much as we should learn from our past is this knowledge, taken out of context, more damaging to the present than it is advantageous? Could this fear bring about a higher stream of tactical voting than ever before, resulting eventually in higher apathy and disappointment in the long run? The state of politics, this two party system we have found ourselves in is not only outdated it is a crime against democracy. We have a multiple party system, but to be pedantic in this case I am making reference to the big three, the Lib Dems have rightly been underlined as the underdog, but today their popularity ratings, a product of the broadcasting of debates, are higher than ever. However, tactical voting seems to threaten the significance of this. Is it possible that despite their growing popularity the Lib Dems will be left in the dirt again because of the fear of a hung parliament? 

I am terrified by this prospect. I am the generation who has come of worse in the present because of government action. I am in tens of thousands of pounds of debt because of my academic career without much hope for a well paid job in the end and the increasingly slim chance of affording my own home. I am drowning in a sea of insecurity, trying to row upstream without a paddle, lost in the woods without a compass and the light at the end of the tunnel is flickering in the wind of cynicism that has enveloped politics in this country.

Happy voting!