Love Song for the Millennials

I'm the sort of person who'll never keep a beat with the natural cadence of life. I'm realizing that for the first time, right now. I'm realizing that I'm best at sampling things in bits and pieces.

That, of course, is because permanence scares the shit out of me. And because I haven't an attention span, nor do any of my friends. We are all dark and depressed and vacant and selfish.

Why do I fall in with that lot? Because I've no choice.

So how did I get into this predicament?

Maybe that's because I was raised by a mother with clinical depression that's gone undiagnosed for forty years. She stares out at the world through glassy eyes.

Or perhaps, because my father's always been more of a roommate than a role-model. He sees himself in everything, so much so, that he forgets that there are other people here too.

Or maybe it's because I wasn't popular enough in high school, or because Mrs. Stephan embarrassed me in the third grade, or because I was uprooted from my home of Long Island and transplanted in coastal Florida just on the eve of adolescence.

Or maybe it's because I hate math and don't want to build bombs. Or because I'm not overtly interested in politics.

Most likely, it's because my society teaches me to avoid ethical conventions. There are no more bad guys, and no more good guys, and therefore I can do exactly as I please. I owe nothing to nobody. I am my own person. I need not subscribe to any discipline or philosophy or religion or society. So long as I pay my taxes.

And pay my taxes I will, because I can't pull my head out of my own ass long enough to pay attention to the money that's being yanked right out of my wallet.

And, even if I could pull my head out of my own narcissistic ass, I doubt I'd notice all the poverty and inequity and violence, because I couldn't pull my myopic eyes away from my I-Phone.

And, my Friends, I argue that if I did manage to pull my sullen eyes away from that liquid I-Phone display, my attention span would be so short I'd fail to notice all the genocide and fratricide tearing apart all our tiny and generally disagreeable neighborhoods on this Earth.

And, if by some grace of God, I was able to pull myself out of this technocratic cave and stare up at that fiery caldron of truth burning on the edge of that seamless blue, and be made aware of all the illusions and distractions and frivolity, I wouldn't do anything anyway.

Why, might you ask?

Because, my friends, I am a Tweeter, a YouTuber, a Facebooker. I am a Millennial.

Distracted, indifferent, and damned, I am. And that's alright with me, so long as there are bread and circuses strewn about the land.

-S