Sunday, April 7, 2013

Zeitgeist: Generation Gap


Introduction


    Zeitgeist posts are first person accounts of various subjects that strike me enough in my day to day life to write about. The title maybe ironic, only time will tell.

Generation Gap

In between. Always in between.
I do not understand my parents sometimes.
They saved up money through out my life,
Through out my sister's life as well.
They saved up money to give me
a college education.
I went to college and graduated.
College taught me many things.
In college I learned that many of the norms
of my youth, of my family
were aimed the wrong way.
I do not refer to the things my parents taught me,
I refer to the things that were unstated. Assumed.

My parents generation drives everywhere,
even if it is quicker to walk, or ride a bike.
My parents generation moved away 
from the places in which they work.
They made the city where they work,
but not where they live.
They commute everyday they work.
Their day begins with one to two hours
of preparation before they can truly begin
their constructive work day.
Two hours of preparation time
for eight hours of work 
and after that an additional thirty minutes
to commute back home. Five days a week.
Fifty two and half hours a week
while only being paid forty. For what?
Is living here that bad?
If it is that bad, why not spend
that additional twelve and half hours
trying to make what you do not like here better?
It seems like a better choice
than simply burning more fossil fuel
 on a dismal drive to someplace
 that you clearly do not enjoy.

Save those fossil fuels
for when you truly must escape.

I am an adult. I am one that is both 
growing and showing.
Something deep down makes me think
I am growing and showing 
in all the wrong ways.
Something else deep down
makes me wonder why any harmless expression
of growing and showing 
could ever be consider wrong.
A paranoid streak.

Art. Music. Literature.
They were taught with and without 
passion while in school.
The teachers effected nothing but passion
for what I will constantly love 
regardless of trend.
I had only one truly great art teacher
before college.
Ms. Ward.

Side note: Most of my band teachers
can go fuck themselves.
No matter how hard they tried,
they still could not ruin music for me.
The probably ruined it for a lot of blossoming minds. 

The fact of the matter is that most of my parents generation
tolerate these forms of humanity,
but pray to their assumed higher power
that no one persuades their progeny 
to try and follow such paths.
They pray that their progeny 
will not transcend without someone else to blame.
The road less travelled. Robert Frost.
They have seen the road less travelled too often.
So have I, and it makes me lose confidence. Sometimes.
Not enough to stop.
It's mental economics.
This still makes so much more sense.

Aaron C. Molden

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