“Our children are brave, but their mission is vague…” — Kae Tempest
I woke this morning with a question, gnawing at my insides “what really is the role of my generation?”. As a 29 year old woman of this earth, I do not blindly believe what I am told. As a child I never went with out things. I had holidays and pets and there was always food. I had friends, and I was loved. I was educated and well prepared.
Except, I was never fully sold on the whole thing. I saw all too easily the massive game that being ‘a responsible grown up’ was. I made a promise with my stars, as a 7 year old that I would never work as a “check out girl” in the supermarkets. Although coming close to doing that work, I never have, yet.
I remember asking my teachers questions:
“what if I do not get a job? what would happen to me if I do not become employed? What if I do not go to university? what if…” and I looked my teacher dead in the eye, “I do not believe in your god?”
What then?
Now, the ‘what then’ question has become a ‘what now?’ question. I am not employed, I have no career plans. I do not own the things that I should as a well brought up child of the 2000s. Instead, I have a backpack, a laptop, a phone, I have one bag of belongings at my parents house and I live with whoever is willing to host me.
I do not have answers so the question “where are you going?”. Mostly I have only questions and a brave necessity to look with unclouded eyes, to feel without dulling the pain and to tell the truth as close as I can.
Mostly I have taken a step out side of what is considered the normal way to go. And I am terrified to step back in. Mostly, I have a hint that I am of more value, NOT participating on the inside of the mainstream culture. I am more of value on the outside. And, it is, at times a lonely and scary place to be.
It is lonely because most people hurry by. Unless, they find a usefulness in the time and space I can offer for them to feel the atrocities of what they face, individually and culturally.
Mostly I am scared of being lulled into paths of false answers, of “The Way”. I am vulnerable in that way. I ask questions like “What does it really mean to be human, right now?” “what does it mean to be a woman?” “what is needed from my generation?’ these sorts of questions are existential questions that lead to the edges of comfortable quiet, contained worlds. Because of this there are people who think they have found the answer to my questions and will try anything to get me to agree and follow them. It is vulnerable to be there because, it is tempting to agree with them and go in that direction too, because, there is often company in that direction for sometime. This can be a sort of refuge from the storm of my own bone close searching.
What I have discovered is that people with answers are not wrong, I am glad that they have found their answers to their questions, it is just that it is not my answer to my questions. My ache, is the one I long to lay close to. I ache to know my own world on my pulse. To know intimately my own hunger, my own passion and ultimately what it is I really seek. To know my own life force tension. It is that which I so passionately follow.
If there is a job on the bench of my generation it is become so intimate with our own felt, lived experience that if anyone tries to persuade us that “it is not so, all is well, get back to the office”, crashes to pieces at our feet.
Ours is the job to express freely the deep betrayal we have inherited from those that have gone before us. In obvious state of the planet that tell a thousand truths loud and clear. Revealing the web of lies holding our cultural dream alive, opium like.
My generation has the job to be totally unreasonable in how we choose to respond, in the steps we choose to take to find each others. Ours is not a cut a dry path to tread. We do not believe in the religious establishments of this world, we do not believe banks, nor trust every word of leaders. In fact our stomach curdle at the very touch of any heirachy imposed over us. We no longer curl our tongues in silence as men speak loud and clear on all that is so in our world.
And yet we do not fight back. We sit and watch, waiting until some thing closer to the what is real to right now reveals its self. Then we move. In a flurry of hash tags, likes, tags, sharings, we are one net with the loudest most powerful voice on earth. We are intimately connected day and night. And we know it. We know the power of a well aimed selfie, a well phrased ticktock. A well put together piece of song. We know how to move our bodies in a way that captures the collective imagination and sends waves of memes across the planet in seconds.
We are a magical generation. We are cynical, wise, shallow, fast paced, our attention is valuable. We sit in university as a show, when in fact we are feeding our circles, growing our followings, learning about the social climate and what is hot right now.
Our anxiety is in the numbness and stupidity of incessant conformity to systems that our body systems know are fake, destructive, controlling and manipulative and we want nothing to do with them.
Yet, our mission is vague…
We are a generation on the edge. On the edge of break down, collapse and daily on the edge of break through or revolution we are the generation thirsty for re-generation. We know how to use the astrological readings to time our movements, we know how to sync our cycles with the moon. We know how to ask for vegan mayonaise and how to be a pain in the arse. We know how to interpret our dreams to decide whether today is a day to pull a sicky and stay home or not. We can read the tarot of Netflix to decide what to watch. We can feed the algorithm to spread our latest meme across continents while we sleep.
We know how to catch the most valued commodity of our time, the most precious and sort after substance, that of human attention.
We are the generation of hackers, code crackers, subversive, radically intimate, we smash taboos, through sharing the details of our lives, the flesh of our skin with thousands. We love each other for that. My generation has the deepest levels of acceptance and the bravest, wisest hearts, and the most shallowest hungers. “Oh you identify as a cat? no problem, come in, and what you like to use the kitty litter tray or do the bathrooms work for you?”
We are a bold generation who know that what has always been done is fucking the planet and that what will come next is happening already. We are a generation of pirates, and edge-workers. We bravely start things again and agin. We research constantly at the edge of what is possible. “How many mushrooms can I munch before I am at forever with the great cosmic design” “How many episodes of Game of Thrones can I watch before my eyeballs roll across the floor”, “how many swipes can I make on tinder before I get a stranger into my bed for the night” and “how many pairs of Allbirds can I buy before the planet is saved once and for all?’
These are just some of the brave research questions this generations walks in daily.
As a generation (about) 67% of us know in our bones that mainstream education is rubbish. That what we really learn is in those tiny hours of a close encounter with another real human being, or busting our lungs out in the hills trails. Or asking probing questions to those that try to control us, then sitting back in comfort as we gladly watch them fail to convince us. This generation is the one with the most refined bullshit detectors. Quick to laugh in the face of anything that tries to prove they know best.
We love a nuanced discussion where everything is up for questioning, where all the cards are on the table and there are no right answers. We love to prove you are wrong and to shock even the oldest, crustiest believers with our clarity.
We are a generation who is learning to look and poke into the darkest corners of our humanity. We openly lay our underworlds on the table and speak candidly about where we are at in our shadow work.
Collectively we are a very smart, caring generation who knows the gravity of being human on this planet. We are a generation of seekers and deliverers. We do not hide what we discover instead share it widely within seconds. It is this level of sharing that stretches us into a global community of young people. Who are seeking not to dominate, be the first, fastest or best. Not to prove something above another. Rather we are interested in engaging in global conversations where every person, body of wisdom and clarity is openly shared and engaged with. In respect honour and integrity we are thirsty to engage in this great wave of evolution. As in these times of massive change, the unknown is being met daily. We bravely speak into the void and in our deepest hearts we long to find each other.
We long to find our tribe. Superfical and deep. We are the generation the embodies paradox. We know how to be both. How to have salad with the dressing on the side and on top. We know who to disagree yet still love. We know how to fall apart in the most epic ways yet still post a well timed selfie on social media the next day. We belong to thousands of groups, yet suffer a deep sense of belonging nowhere, we are know things and are deeply groundless in that.
We are hopeless, chaotic and the most under prepared generation for the massive mission we have on our plates: To redesign the entire way that we do life as humans. To remember again the indigenous ways of being on this planet. To become both shaman and techno wizard.
To stand bravely, shaking, robed, unrobed, masked, unmasked, hands tied in protest or clasped warmly together with another, black, brown, white, cat, cosmically aligned or academically sceptical and informed. We most long to hold, know and be in conversation with it all.
We are learning the impossible, educating ourselves where the conservative structures that raised us failed. We must learn to hear what is said in the silence and to move when we have nothing. We must know how to speak to each other when our languages are different. We must learn to feel our blood flowing like rivers though our veins, weather we are in at Beijing office or dashing across a Scottish moor. We must know how to hear each other. Know how to rise up and find each other. We must learn the art of asking, giving and reciving. We must remember how to crouch down and listen to the song in a ragged streetwalkers words. We must remember the wisdom of the wooded trees and teach ourselves how to communicate with the spirits of all things. We must learn again how to stand whilst everyone else is sitting, we must sensitise ourselves to the qualities of the warriors of today. We must learn to not idolise to instead stand with. We must learn to speak our truth whilst being seen and witnessed and we must learn to listen to the softest of truths whispered from the quietest corners of our universe.
We are a collective generation of space and time travellers and we are the generation that is learning to do Magic.
Written by Millicent Haughey
