So, what is this crisis? "The Present Crisis"? I've asked my friends, quarter-lifers, themselves. They all have a variety of opinions: no great war to define our generation, the call to dream -- hell, I've even heard Sesame Street is to blame, or the Neighborhood of Make-Believe! I asked half-lifers and three-quarter lifers, and truly, they don't understand. Our paradigms are our own. Perhaps this is why I wasn't ravenous to read Brokaw's The Greatest Generation.
What is it objectively? I'll have to leave that to the psychologists of the world. I can only speak for myself, and in that, hopefully, I'll speak for my generation.
Since I've been very, very young, I've been drawn up and spit out by the sound of train whistles. They've a haunting kind of resonance. All the more because I don't see the source. It's a sound of movement. More than that, though, its moving sound reminds me that I'm still. And when the last whisps of the Doplar effect pass me by, I'm aware that the train has moved on and I have not.
This is my feeling of the Quarter life. It's a crisis, for me, of missing out. Where have the trains gone? Is it someplace better? Someplace more fitting, more exciting? And so, for me, I'm haunted by these several dreams that I could be living. You see, some people have called the Quarter Life Crisis a problem of anxiety over living their dreams. This is not my problem. It's not a problem of grasping a dream, but of choosing which dream to grasp.
When, by luck, you do happen to live your dream, often you discover that the reality has replaced the dream and you're left with the unchosen dreams still buzzing around in your mind. For me, I've been moving from dream to dream -- and for this I call myself lucky -- but mostly I'm just restless.
We were told to follow our dreams, and for people like me who don't automatically distrust my elders, this seemed like a satisfying goal. Following your dreams was itself an ideal because only the minority ever did it. What happens if the majority of a generation does this? Paradise? Or perhaps were allowed to see, with greater clarity, the consequences of dreaming. That is, the difficulty, the danger, and the daydream.
Dreaming is an auspicious power. Perhaps even the fundamental power and grace of mankind: the way in which God speaks to us. For this reason, it is not to be taken lightly. For myself, I've found that dreams can quickly turn to temptations if not tempered by forces such as prayer.
Can we be too trustful of a dream? Who ever declared for us that dreams were not incorruptible as much as they were not impossible? I think this is the beginning of my crisis.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
A Sin of Security
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and my mind is a whirl. A brain fever, maybe. The other night just such a thing happened, but I was in the midst of prayer when I awoke, and prayer is never secluded to the brain.
My life has been suffering from a strain, but until now I haven't been able to name it. When I awoke, I could.
In my relationships with women, something was not right. I wanted something from them. This quarter-life crisis has found me attempting to hold onto things -- the past, mostly. But why? I've been trying to build a shelter to protect me from the gathering storm. With the right woman, I thought, I could create this shelter. False security.
I had been desiring security. This was my sin.
When I desire Woman A or Woman B, it's out of a presumption that I can be complete, on my own -- but isn't this a paradox? "On my own" and partnered with a woman? These do contradict, right? Not quite. Because it is by my own invention that I'm made secure.
By my own will and not by God's will for me, I would be granting myself security. This is the central temptation.
I perceive, when I desire, that this security would be far-reaching -- this is the romantic notion: that a woman could so re-align my life as to grant me freedom from emotional insecurity. I could protect myself from fear and danger, if only I could have the woman I choose. Right? No, wrong and worse still, I would be the Oedipal child, eh? Hiding in the folds of my surrogate mother's dress. No, to be a man, I cannot seek security.
If we are honest, we accept that there is no security in this life. We certainly cannot demand this from a woman. Perhaps this is the root of chauvinism. Nonetheless, it is for me a false path. Wisdom might have us hear all voices offering safety, protection, or freedom from fear as false. This is the path of the Cross. The only true safety we are offered in this world is following the Cross into the unknown.
But why is this "sin"? I haven't answered this. This is the temptation of self-sufficiency. It is the end of the morality of Nietzche and Rand, but only a starting place for Christianity.
For what need have I of the cross, if I am an island complete unto myself? I am denying the essential human condition.
To find love, we must become vulnerable. Obviously, this is the Christian path -- look to the infant Jesus. This is His season, after all.
«God made his Word short, he abbreviated it» (Is 10, 23; Rom 9, 28) As Pope Benedict pointed out in his sermon of Christmas Eve 2006, God made himself small, unprotected, and entirely vulnerable in the form of an infant. The infant's poverty, as He lay in the manger, was complete. What security did He have? But love came to Him.
My own pursuit of love has been nothing like this. It has been an attempt, through the partnership of a great woman, to render myself invulnerable. I have lost sight of the Giver in exchange for the gift. I have put a god before God. It is not the woman, though. It is myself that I'm propping up, my own will and my own agency.
My life has been suffering from a strain, but until now I haven't been able to name it. When I awoke, I could.
In my relationships with women, something was not right. I wanted something from them. This quarter-life crisis has found me attempting to hold onto things -- the past, mostly. But why? I've been trying to build a shelter to protect me from the gathering storm. With the right woman, I thought, I could create this shelter. False security.
I had been desiring security. This was my sin.
When I desire Woman A or Woman B, it's out of a presumption that I can be complete, on my own -- but isn't this a paradox? "On my own" and partnered with a woman? These do contradict, right? Not quite. Because it is by my own invention that I'm made secure.
By my own will and not by God's will for me, I would be granting myself security. This is the central temptation.
I perceive, when I desire, that this security would be far-reaching -- this is the romantic notion: that a woman could so re-align my life as to grant me freedom from emotional insecurity. I could protect myself from fear and danger, if only I could have the woman I choose. Right? No, wrong and worse still, I would be the Oedipal child, eh? Hiding in the folds of my surrogate mother's dress. No, to be a man, I cannot seek security.
If we are honest, we accept that there is no security in this life. We certainly cannot demand this from a woman. Perhaps this is the root of chauvinism. Nonetheless, it is for me a false path. Wisdom might have us hear all voices offering safety, protection, or freedom from fear as false. This is the path of the Cross. The only true safety we are offered in this world is following the Cross into the unknown.
But why is this "sin"? I haven't answered this. This is the temptation of self-sufficiency. It is the end of the morality of Nietzche and Rand, but only a starting place for Christianity.
For what need have I of the cross, if I am an island complete unto myself? I am denying the essential human condition.
To find love, we must become vulnerable. Obviously, this is the Christian path -- look to the infant Jesus. This is His season, after all.
«God made his Word short, he abbreviated it» (Is 10, 23; Rom 9, 28) As Pope Benedict pointed out in his sermon of Christmas Eve 2006, God made himself small, unprotected, and entirely vulnerable in the form of an infant. The infant's poverty, as He lay in the manger, was complete. What security did He have? But love came to Him.
My own pursuit of love has been nothing like this. It has been an attempt, through the partnership of a great woman, to render myself invulnerable. I have lost sight of the Giver in exchange for the gift. I have put a god before God. It is not the woman, though. It is myself that I'm propping up, my own will and my own agency.
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