COME HELL OR
SOME TERRIBLE SONG BY A NEW BOY BAND
To
remember the great events and stories of our lives, one first has to
live them. That’s where most people seem to falter. It
isn’t as easy as we all think: we say, nearly on a daily basis, “Oh,
I’ll do that one day,” or “I’m definitely going there some time...,” or
“Hell, I could do that...” But the truth is that we never
do. None of us scrounge up the energy to haul our rear ends off
the sofa and just walk out the front door, and those that do are
generally trying to escape something, running away from opportunity and
change.
Now, back to the real point here: I haven’t been around long
enough to have any real stories or great events that are worthy of
being quoted hundreds of years from now by memory via folks that are
self proclaimed intellectuals because they can repeat something someone
ancient said once upon a time. No. I’m merely
nineteen. I live in the 2003 planet America. I cannot
remember anything about my life fifteen years ago and on, so why should
I have anything to say?
I don’t.
I only have things to recall, and to remold and shape to the way
I think I should remember them. I am an observer in this world,
as so many of us are unknowingly. The ones that actually exist
are the ones that have made their mark and effect the world with every
action that they make. The people who are tracked daily by what
they do and say are the ones who live and act in this world. The
faceless actors are only supporters, passersby, observers, to the play
that takes place every day on such an elite scale.
What an unfortunate thing, that I, the youth of America, the
youth of the world, feel that my life is in a rut, that I am being
forced into submission, that I am over. My chance for existence
has come and gone. It is no one’s fault but my own, however, for
not allowing myself off my sofa, my comfort zone.
They all said I could have done so much good for this
world. I could have given the world some lyrics to sing along to,
some new face to idolize on the silver screen, some other juvenile
delinquent to scrutinize and criticize for the cries of help sent
across the airwaves in some way or another. They all said I could
have been a professional athlete, I could have been a politician, even
though my morals were a little too important to my character than that
of a true money grubber. They all said that I could have lived
out the dreams that they were never capable of fulfilling for their
various reasons.
However, as I approach the next stage of life, I realize that I
have nowhere to go. College, Young Adulthood: The Land of
Opportunity! I am lost, at nineteen, I am lost. I am headed
towards a career of underpaid long hours of loneliness and depression
that will plague my mind with thoughts of “Where did I go wrong?” and
“How did I end up here?” The truth is, I never had a
chance. Social status and genetic chance led me here, and here is
where I am trapped.
But is there no escape?
Am I doomed to write desperate haikus on napkins about the
monotony of a walled in life, like my father before me?
Will my future be as much a burden to me as it was to him?
Will my greatest joys be what holds me back and cause me to
rethink my purpose in this world in my days to come?
Will I hide my mind and epiphanies of the world around me inside
my six foot thick concrete shell I construct around my being because I
am afraid that someone, anyone else, might just find them and feel
changed or insulted?
Will I lose my identity to the future I am afraid to proceed to,
but am hurtled towards without much control?
Fear is what traps us, forces us to repress ourselves, and
prevents us from stepping over the thin line between comfort zone and
chance. Fear of criticism, fear of acceptance, fear of change
makes us hesitant. Opportunity does not come knocking, lest you
give it your address. There has to be an action for there to be a
reaction. You must give yourself the chance, you must overstep
your own boundaries. Accept your fate, what will happen will
happen. But remember, you will be there, you will be what’s
happening and will affect how it is happening. In your future,
what will happen will happen because you led yourself to it, but it
will happen.
Some things cannot be changed. But these things are
uncontrollable by any in the human race, which puts every being on this
planet, observer or actor, in the same seat. Such a fact can be
encouraging. Every person on this planet, no matter station, nor
any other attribute, has the same abilities to control their own life.
Then why do I feel trapped?
Why do I feel stuck in a broken record?
Why am I so ineffective, in any matter personal or worldly?
Disillusioned at nineteen, and lost in a crowd of faceless
observers. Realizing that of everything that nineteen years has
brought to my mind and body, I am without many memories of the good
times, and filled with the emptiness that a loss of hope has given
me. What event brought this on? There isn’t one. It
is a hole, an abyss in my heart that has slowly over time accumulated
such a wealth of nothing. All the memories collapsed in upon
themselves at the weight of the nothing and created a vast, vapid black
hole in my heart. Such a place, such a time, such a world.
If I lived one hundred years ago, I would probably be singing the same
tunes, but with an added hint of an outcry for women’s rights. If
I lived one hundred years from now I would be singing the same tunes,
adding a plea to help save the dying earth. Now, I mourn the
death of youth. I cry out to everyman to remember what coloring
outside the lines was like and writing those dreaded poems for English
in the eighth grade; how it felt to play dodgeball on the playground,
even if it meant you were the last one picked; shutting yourself up in
your room so you could listen to your rebellious tunes of the age;
being you at your most basic and blissful level. Creativity,
games, puzzles that utilized your talent and your wit, dancing without
a care, singing at the top of your voice, who cares how you looked or
sounded? You just did it. Now you sing in the shower or in
the car when no one’s around. You doodle stick figures on the
telephone notes pad and then scribble them out so dark they are blotted
out to any other eye than your brief memory. You play the game of
catering to your boss’s needs, or your family’s, or your debts’.
Puzzles intimidate you, they make you fear appearing inferior, and, for
the same reasons, you don’t dance.
What were you like when nothing mattered?
How did the world look to you?
How did you look to the world?
Or did you even care?
Maybe I’m only speaking for myself. Perhaps I am wrong in
thinking there are more folks than I that are afflicted with this
dilemma. No matter, I don’t care. I am writing this because
of all the things that I have learned and forgotten, I do know that my
opinion and thoughts are valuable to me, because in a year, or even in
a week, my entire outlook may change, my world may change. And to
remember myself, put down in words of incessant rambling one not so
unique evening, will one day mean everything to the me who forgot to
think and challenge and put that damned foot forward, come hell, high
water, or some terrible song by a new boy band.
DISCLAIMER:
summer 2003 - some aspects of my character and beliefs in regards to
above have altered slightly - do not be offended
if...i..somehow...offended...you...?