Over the course of the last several years, I’ve come to a very abrupt conclusion about my life: I lack passion. I’m not talking about passion in the “do the sexy times” sense, but rather that sort of passion that gets one all riled up to do something. In my younger years, I would get overly-passionate over just about any cause and I would not stand down from my opinion. I remember my teen years, when I was beyond irked over the use of a Native American mascot for my high school’s sports teams. I’d get pissed off and grumble and refuse to participate in pep rallies and voice my feelings to anyone nearby. It’s not that I feel using Native Americans as sports mascots is a great thing these days, I just don’t feel so worked up about it to protest. As I got older, I was ready to protest any sort of injustice. Beyond that, my temper got a little more fiery and it was pretty likely that I would come to blows if necessary to defend my beliefs. (Okay, even beyond beliefs..if I were pissed off enough.) These days…don’t really see the point. I’ll take verbal jabs when necessary, but that fieriness is all but gone. Part of it is that I just don’t have that attention span to really care that much. But I think another part is just good ol’ fashioned jadedness.
Growing up in the 90s, it seemed like we were part of a generation that was really going to make changes. CLEARLY the older people just didn’t “get it”. We blamed them for the ills of the planet and were determined to fix things. And yet, almost 20 years later, shit is still broken, metaphorically speaking. Major companies are just now bragging about going green when the rest of use were pushing Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. AIDS is still being spread around and teens still haven’t figured out the safe sex mantra. Corporations and people alike seem greedier than ever while the structures of the economy seem to be crumbling. These are people MY age who bought cars and houses they couldn’t afford and lusted for more material items. What the fuck happened? How did we go from trying to change things to perpetuating the problem? We’ve become self-centered douchebags and are helping feed the egos of countless more generations of self-centered douchebags.
True, I am probably glossing over the larger issues at the center of this mess we now find ourselves in. I suppose my disillusionment is something of a beast at this point. I don’t mean to imply that I don’t feel strongly about certain issues; I just lack the desire to really pursue these issues beyond holding that belief. What would the point be?