Dude It Gets Old

I want to talk about cynicism. I am a lady of certain age, a dude from a time, and that time is the 90's - one of the most disillusioned, skeptical, jaded generations there is. Many of my contemporaries are aging out. I mean, you can always find a '76er out there somewhere, but the field of dudes just gets younger and younger.

Youth is fine - there is a time for everything. But recently I turned a certain age and it came heavy upon me. There is a magical book in my possession called "Seven Gothic Tales", and in the story "The Old Chevalier" I read this:

"I was so young then that I could no more than other young people give up the deep faith in my own star, in a power that loved me and looked after me in preference to all other human beings. ... It is when this faith begins to wear out, and when you conceive the possibility of being in the same position as other people, that youth is really over."

This book is magical in my life because it is so often timely, and no less here: I had known exactly the privilege of youth and the arrogance that comes with it ... but right around my birthday, I started to know collapse, failure, vulnerability ... in some ways more definite than others, but in general a pervasive feeling of doom, of a universe that had stopped smiling down on me, fallen from grace, retracted blessing. It is beyond attitude - sudden body failure is an intimate revolt, this thing that you are on the earth in sudden disagreement with the self that resides inside it. It is a hard time to maintain a positive attitude.

But more than "getting older" - cynicism has been a part of me at every stage. High school, duh. First college year, my closest friend and I promoted and exemplified such dismal qualities that it spawned the acronym SCEB - we made a temple to Sarcasm, Cynicism, Exaggeration, and Bitterness. In later years I had to consciously work to discover more positive attitudes, less hate, simply to start functioning in the world, instead of just making fun of it all the time, dwelling in psychic drag. But the tendency is hardwired.

So it is interesting to me to note a very real generational difference. The young ones of these days seem often shot through with pervasive positivity, diy ingenuity, a seriousness and sense of self-importance. Is it the very real result of guidance counselors hammering "You can do anything!" into young brains? In some ways it is difficult to tell which qualities belong to the generation, and which are only borrowed from youth, time will tell ... but I feel oddly positioned, in contrast. I focus on complaints not because nothing is ever good enough but because things can be improved if problems are openly recognized. But to express my critical observations in these youth pools casts me as an outsider, an adult, or just some kind of jerk unable to enjoy the gifts of nature and bent on disturbing everyone else's experience too. Even on a casual level - a contemporary encountering them noted "They don't have jokes." My running commentary is incisive, cutting, rarely cruel but consistently irreverent, it jabs and produces a particular kind of laughter - yes, "jokes".

Well, I like it! I mean, recent exposure to the reality of aging hasn't been totally pleasant, but that's just a thing, planets passing, and I needed a change anyway. I enjoy grappling with the intimate difficulties and personal transformation. And part of that is the creation of a relationship to positivity, which I think I maintain, though outwardly it may appear not so. The positivism associated with the New Age is often a disgusting distortion, but the initial principle of intention is real and powerful. I love that I have been able to encounter this principle on my own terms, as a balance to more negative forces, and I am incredibly skeptical of those who are hardwired with this assumption. Who I am must critique who they are - not just the youth but any consumers of wholesale feelgood philosophies - holiness is not so simple, and dabbling in all that light encourages blindness.

And poor culture! getting all gobbed up with earnest, mediocre efforts about personal transformation. "Why are they always hatching from eggs?" Inspired by the graces, it is celebration of life processes and self-absorbed obsession with personal experience - seemingly reasonable subjects for "art", except that the world we live in is so densely complicated with ambiguities and darkness and mystery that I begin to curse this diy movement, these energized fanatics trying to cram us with "beauty".

To all my aging brothers and sisters, I have never lost reverence for aged or the elderly. But in youth I imagined the trick to lifetime well-being was to maintain that grace of youth through the passing years. Now that I have crossed a time line that sentiment sounds like denial. In the real scenario, there is struggle, and it can be liked! I am positive of that!