I am posting the song the blog title came from first today.
Click the "Play" button and enjoy:
We are slipping. All of us. A hot topic in the media today is that of the millennial generation, of which I am a proud-ish member. Granted, I try fairly hard not to not pay attention to the media as a whole and would rather get my information from a source collective, but none the less, we are a part of this.
Anything I say from this point forward is only scratching the surface of where I think we are falling short, and there will be many other instances to come when you will hear about myself and my generation as a whole, so do not fear, because I have all intention of exploring our uncertainties over a span of time.
We are expected to be a certain person or act a certain way on a continual basis and through all of this, we are exposed for no other reason than living in a time of exposure. The chivalry we were taught as recently as a few generations ago has faded to the point of many women thinking a man is creepy for acting in such a way. I have written about this before here. As a generation, we have been told to put on a mask or put up a front in so many situations that we are losing our individual identities and we are slowly becoming more and more lost within our own characters because we no longer seem to have control over them.
Two generations of parents ago, their children were taught by them to have a certain face and persona within their respective business as a means of achieving success. To a point and within certain situations, this can be sound advice; be one person at the office and who you really are in your free time. I spent enough time in a business world of interacting with people and having to use this face that I became accustomed to it and played the game really well. Exceptionally well, within my career path at the time, if we are being honest. The root of the problem seems to have started here for many people, though I do not see the business composure model as the enabler as much as the gateway of individual translation.
I fear that sometime along the way, we began losing the cognitive ability to be an individual because we were taught to be what someone else expected us to be. Etiquette is one thing and there are moments where one should be a little more formal than when in their own living room, but even then, what is considered "normal"? What I mean by this is the person we see sitting on a park bench, reading a book is usually not the same person we see in a bar on a Friday night, even though they live in the same body. The person we see helping their neighbor clean up their yard after a storm is not the same person we see attacking someone over a Facebook comment. The way I see it, the whole idea comes right back down to what I said from the beginning, exposure.
Just like an actor plays a role, we seem to be doing this to ourselves in our own realities (or lack thereof). We were given and grew up in development of so many new ways to wear any face that we often do so without even noticing. As a generation, we are allowed to get involved in volunteering and spreading positive actions and then go back home only to scream at our children. We can even work in an environment where we help people on a daily basis and then go home to anonymously bash people in online forums or blogs to make us feel good, because, after all, the person on the receiving end of our comments is someone we will never see in person, right?
I understand where we are, but I also know we can do better and get out of this mess we have created. Understanding effectively the reasons why we cannot identify with ourselves and figure out who we really are is beyond me. Getting to that point only makes the journey of life much harder, which is why I do not trust anyone right away anymore. I have found too many of the nicest people in the world who would eventually go entirely out of their way to hurt me in one way or another; not only practice such a thing, but then wonder why we are not on speaking terms after the fact. After putting six years into a friendship and having nobody else I talked to as often, I was stabbed in the back and made a fool of without any notion of there being a problem by the very person I put so much trust in.
We do this to ourselves and it seems to be all we know. I made a vow a long time ago to be the same person to everyone and I am trying so hard to make that happen. I just wish we could all wake up one day and realize there is no longer a need to invest in an alter ego.
Unfortunately, for the time being, the road to being real is a long journey.
Being a fictional character is easy.
Having character is a necessary difficulty.
Unfortunately, for the time being, the road to being real is a long journey.
Being a fictional character is easy.
Having character is a necessary difficulty.
Grace and Peace,
-Drew
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/drew.silvers
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/drewcoustic
Email: drewcoustic@gmail.com
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