for those about to rock

don't let me down, br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-uce!!

i hung out on our stoop last night, catching up with my neighbor tim and my buddy mike before hitting the hay. things became slightly sentimental at some point, which led us to discussing the well-tread subject of the mid-twenties malaise.

mindful that i'll soon be marking my 26th year, i really should have had a more vested personal interest in this part of the conversation, and if it had been a year or so ago, i'm sure i would have.

before proceeding, a basic definition of the mid-twenties malaise: a thoroughly-conflicted and unsettling epiphany, usually engendered by a sufficient remove from academia and the sense of distinct purpose it fosters, wherein a consideration of all the things one wants to do with life butts heads with a growing awareness of one's mortality.

i spent a good share of ages 24 and 25 mired in this malaise, fretting over the fleeting nature of existence and its consequences for unfulfilled obligations and unrealized dreams.

i've since abandoned this reductive way of thinking, and it didn't take mental gymnastics or another epiphany to do so.

but back to the stoop. tim explained the phenomenon as a result of repression; he has argued in the past that humans revert to repression as a means of coping with trauma that, left to its own devices, would cripple our ability to function, and his point last night was that death is essentially the ultimate trauma that we surround ourselves with people and busy ourselves constantly in order to brush under the rug. the mid-twenties funk, then, represents an instance where the repressive buffer zone is lifted -- usually, it's the discrepancy between what we had prepared ourselves to be doing while in college and what we actually find ourselves doing today that squashes the protective barrier -- and we are forced for the first time to confront the mortality that we've kept at bay all our lives. a quarter-life crisis, if you will.

i think there's some truth to his thoughts on repression and, to make a generalization that loosely relates, i think that unwavering optimism and blithe ignorance are often one and the same. by the same token, however, it's foolish to deliberately insulate yourself from the good in life. what's the alternative, after all, to repressing thoughts of mortality? terminal cynicism?

unchecked, such pessimism breeds its own self-perpetuating bullshit cycle. unchecked, this pessimism is self-destructive and serves no pragmatic function. just like its optimist converse, this pessimism by its very nature posits ridiculously that respecting life and respecting death are somehow mutually exclusive.

plenty of people, especially folks around my age, cling to one side of the fence (typically the brooding pessimist end; it's popular these days) for dear life. i think that both perspectives are totalizing, and that their adherents vaguely assume a stylish psuedo-omnicompetence in adopting them. bullshit, in other words.

and so, i prefer to stick somewhere in the middle, accepting that we've all literally been in the process of dying from the womb onward as it is, all while acknowledging that this mortal coil is a complicated, precious, miraculous thing that is whatever we do to make of it and that we'll never fully understand or appreciate, at least not all at once, and at least not while we're on it.

a personal birthday motto, then (NOT a manifesto, as some might be expecting by this point): i want to embrace my own relative insignificance and never compromise my capacity for either joy or hurt, or pathos; i want to attack every moment with a wonder and humility that respects how vast and complex the world really is; i want to absorb this life like a thirsty sponge. [cue uplifting orchestral rave-up]

posted by jomilkman @ 8:11 AM