For those of you who have known me a while, I’m sure you’ve been expecting this. I’m sick, therefore, I think, and because I think, I must write. I have a very stream-of-consciousness style to my “illness writings” as I call them. In fact, I’m typing with my eyes closed in a completely darkened room because the light from the computer screen makes my head throb.
This sickness was contracted in the workplace. It’s a bug that’s been going around for a few weeks now, and it’s finally gotten to me in spite of all the health precautions I’ve taken to avoid it. One question that was raised in the dressing room was “What is it that makes these 20-something young men come in to work, deathly ill, and think it’s okay?” That’s a fair question, and one I’ve been thinking on for a while now. The short answer, as far as I can give, is that it’s a generational thing.
Young men in my demographic, 18-28, have grown up in varied and uncertain times. We’re old enough to remember a more carefree time in the U.S., in the economic boom of the ‘90’s, and yet we’re young enough to have been harshly shaped by the world-changing events that occurred in our developmental years, thus planting the seeds of fear and mistrust in our young, developing minds. Then, when we finally finish our education and attempt to enter the workforce, we find ourselves trying to gain an economic foothold in a world where there are five job-hunters for every position available, and a Bachelor’s degree is equivalent to what a high-school diploma was ten years ago. If/when we find employment, we try to hold onto it by any means possible, because employers recognize that we can be discarded like so many paper cups, and easily replaced by the job-hungry masses clawing at our cubicle walls.
We have no job security, we have no room for error, we know we are looked down upon, and worst of all, we look down upon ourselves. We know that as little as 20 years ago, the job market was much different; a positive referral was a brilliant thing, background/credit rating checks were almost unheard of, and someone could walk into an office with a resume and a copy of their diploma and walk out with a job after only a half-dozen tries. Now, we’re forced to fight each other for the scraps that our employers are willing to part with… little hope to stay employed… much less hope to be promoted.
Christopher Hitchens is dead. I learned that fact 24 hours ago, and it’s really yet to settle in. When I was in my “spirituality-limbo,” his book “God is NOT Great,” helped me realize that NOT having a religious ideology was, in fact, an option, and (along with several other books by other authors) got me started down my road to my current freedom from religion. I don’t know what I can say that can fully encapsulate how much I simultaneously loathed and respected this man. He was adamantly and steadfastly always pushing people to find out what the truth was, and to fight for it, but he did it in the coarsest, most emotionally grating way possible, which (while effective) makes me wonder how much I’d be willing to emotionally challenge someone in order to help them break free from a lie they’ve grown up with.
As always, I’m personally looking for the truth. Unfortunately, I’m human, and am subject to the all-too-human weakness of subjectivity. I think a wonderful part of the human experience is to find out what the nature of reality is, outside of how we perceive and interpret it with our limited sensory systems. What is there in the universe to see outside of what our optical cells interpret from incoming photons? What celestial music can be heard in the vibrations of electromagnetic waves that need no medium to travel through? What do other worlds’ atmosphere’s smell of?
101.1 degree fever.
