all the baby elephants in this room

Author’s Note: This was typed up and ready to be posted last night, but the system wasn’t working…just in case my timeline makes no sense.

It’s 11:05 PM DC time right now, and there’s nothing I’d like more than to go to bed, but I’m going to type this instead. Because I have a lot to say after today, and I have to admit that there’s something very Carrie Bradshaw-like of me typing on my laptop (Harold, I call him…that’s a story for another time) in the late hours of the night.

And, before anyone slams me for that reference, I really like Carrie. She’s a personality, to be sure. And she has a lot to say. People listen to her, real and fictional, and that’s something.

This blog doesn’t focus on my trip–though I really could type for hours and hours and hours (which is why I probably shouldn’t use this blog for that purpose…there’s not enough time here as it is). I tend to be very thorough. Trip information is most likely going to be posted here when I get home. If this blog still exists then, I’ll leave the entries public and link them here.

This blog is going to focus on what I’m learning, what I’m seeing, and, as you can see from the title, maybe a few things that people don’t want to talk about but should…if not now, certainly soon.

I begin with an article. This article, to be exact, given to my by my honors algebra 2/trig teacher (shoutout to Mrs. Stasio!) on the first or second day of class. We were to read it as part of the homework. And I have to say, I was rather indignant the first time I read it–so indignant that I went to bed thinking about it, woke up thinking about it, spent the day thinking about it…because it’s a harsh viewpoint. Reading it, I felt like yet another Santa-like structure in my life was tumbling down.

It wasn’t until two days later that I realized I felt this way because the article was true.

That was, of course, everything I’d been told when I was young: “You can do anything you want if you set your mind to it. Follow your dreams, and they’ll come true.” My parents. My teachers. Every Disney movie ever made.

Now, I’m not going to call that statement an outright lie, because I’m sure there are several people in the world who followed that advice and were rewarded handsomely. Several more took that advice and ended up only a little more than couple steps from where they started.

This is where the natural defense mechanism kicks in, the “Fine, they just didn’t try hard enough…believe enough. But me, I’m one person! I control myself! I’m stronger than that!”

Have any of you ever experienced a high school theater audition?

Here’s what you see: several (let’s go with ten for this example…a nice, easy, visual number) people standing in line in odd costumes that they threw together in the past week or so (because besides the audition cut they’ve been given, they don’t know too much else about their desired character), positively quivering with a mixture of nervousness, hope, fear, and ambition. Add to that the fact that they’re all teenagers, and life and death basically hangs on every moment, and at that moment, no room’s ever held so much heart.

You want to tell me that nine of them aren’t trying hard enough…that nine of them aren’t believing enough?

I lived, for a while after reading this article, in a little place of self-satisfied cynicism. The fact that I had been disillusioned my whole life was someone else’s fault! I was disappointed, but very much relieved that I could be justified in blaming my parents, my teachers—everyone but myself.

This was not the point. It is true that the world is not handed to anyone. That’s something everyone needs to learn. One person is not more important than the other. This became crystal clear to me as I argued with my mother several times about career choices. We’re in a recession. There’s no denying that. There’s no quick fix. Deal with it.

The world is changing. People in relatively secure lifestyles are getting the rugs pulled out from under their feet. Education is getting more demanding. People use technology to advance in evil as well as good. It is just now becoming clear—after several years of warning—that we do, in fact, have to take responsibility for our environment. I remember learning about recycling and pollution ten years ago, and no one was paying attention. Now everyone’s hopping on the bandwagon because it’s the “cool” thing to do.

Nothing is stable anymore, and it’s undeniably scary.

The natural response, I find, in the face of a lot of change, is retreat. Shocked, quick retreat to material comforts, to tradition, to an idealized version of the world that offers comfort. It’s understandable. Fight or flight. Go back to the familiar.

And yet, it is our generation—my generation. The generation that is proclaimed both (in theory) the bright future and (on the ten o’clock news) the future downfall of society. We are the ones who must live with the future—whatever is handed to us. And it is us who have risen up—within our communities, online, around the world—to try and regain control of our future. One by one, we realize that, unlike older generations, we can’t afford to be arrogant. Our education, our careers, our families are up in the air right now, and it’s going to take something unconventional to get them back down. We recognize that our stability is gone, and that reverting solely to tradition is not going to help us. We have to push forward, go into the unknown, try out some things, make some mistakes, and—heaven forbid—fail several times before we get to where we need to go.

Not that it’s too much to worry about—judging from what I’ve seen, we don’t give up easily.

Lately, I’m not just told to change the world. I’m told how. The ideal and hopeful expectation of my youth is becoming more and more concrete every day. I, we, have a responsibility. Fix it. Less and less of my friends are content to sit by and hope the world better. They do. They speak. They act. They plan. We unite together, a force that shouldn’t be written off just yet.

Just because we’re young doesn’t mean we’re wrong.

Tags: reflection