Generation Me

I am sitting in my apartment , where marijuana and “The Cha-Cha Slide” are wafting into my window. It can mean only one thing: there is a Church festival going on down the street. St. Joseph’s is a pretty conservative congregation, which is why I’m somewhat surprised that there are so many hoodlums streaming up the street to go play skee-ball in the Church parking lot.

But that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m writing this because the bell jar has lifted, and I am happier and lighter than I’ve been in awhile. Those who know me know that I’m a pendulum and always have been. I was what people call an intense child, one who sobbed for hours in the bathtub telling my mother that I didn’t want to live in an apartment, one who sobbed silently before bed thinking about the blind kid in my brother’s class and how hard his life would be, one who adored the elderly and spent most of her time reading on the couch while her mother brought her pots of tea.

I once cried because my mother had made the mistake of buying her OCD child a DATED JOURNAL, and I HAD MISSED A DAY. AN ENTIRE PAGE WOULD BE BLANK. THE WORLD WOULD STOP SPINNING. Sometimes I would lay in bed thinking about how infinite space was, how insignificant I was in the grand scheme of things, and picture myself floating through space when the world ended in however many thousands of years it will end.

But I wasn’t a sad child. I was also nuts for Pee-Wee Hermand and the Ninja Turtles. I for some reason really liked cats, and I had an obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder for a long time.

In a lot of ways, I’m the same. Very intense. I love to laugh and joke, but I am also completely awash with pity and sadness for nearly the entire world. “Seriously, Nora,” my brother said when I visited him, “do you make up a sad story for every person you meet on the street?” The answer is yes, I most certainly do. That old man on the subway is completely alone in the world, and goes back to his filthy apartment to sit alone on his sofa and contemplate his loneliness. That retarded little boy on my block is going to have a life full of pain and sadness and people making fun of him. Why? Because I know so.

The past few weeks I’ve been gloomy and sad for basically no reason. I’ve been a Debbie Downer, a conversational void, a real poop dollar.

So what is behind this change of heart, this sudden flip of the switch? Retail Therapy? Paxil? Sad to say, it was an article in Metro, the free paper that is shoved down your throat as soon as you enter the subway. I was reading over this woman’s shoulder during my morning commute when I caught an editorial about my generation, how we’re so incredibly egocentric (hello blogs) that it drives us into depression. In short, we’re crushed by the weight of the world that revolves around us.

Wow, I thought. That’s so pathetic. And so true.

Tonight I spoke to my mother, who brought up my dear dear friend and pseudo-grandfather Jules, a brilliant and amazing man who committed his entire life to education. Jules studied with famed psychologist Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor (as well as the founder of existential psychology and logotherapy) who said that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Maybe Viktor was onto something. Maybe my whole generation just needs a big, old-fashioned attitude adjustment.