Mirrors are intriguing.
They show you neither who you are nor the person you would like to be. All they show you is the way you will appear to--and thus will be perceived by--those around you.
This allows for a rather pleasing loophole, whereby we as a society have convinced ourselves that we're okay so long as the mirror says so. What others think is the only thing that matters, and not in the positive, "my behavior is being seen" sort of way but rather in the negative, "i need to be a lemming to the Joneses" sort of way.
Meanwhile, we lose sight of our morals, loosen our ethics, and cease to have dreams. Present and future are lost to an indiscernible void and we become robots, never questioning the path we are on or where it leads, thus finding ourselves blissfully ignorant of the true desires within us. Desires
To be used for a greater purpose
To reach further than apathy allows
To be freed from the chains that bind us to a pathetic existence
To fight for something we know is important
To live; to TRULY live
To love and be loved in return.
All of these have, tragically, been lost in our world today. There is a biting irony in the fact that those desires initially sound cliche, until we realize just how foreign they are to our real lives. Our society's notion of "love" is one i find so appalling i can't possibly deal with it in this blog. As for life? Well...
I once fooled myself into thinking i was a leader, a risk-taker, and up to any challenge. Perhaps it was salutatorian status that taught me that, or maybe my membership in some society or another that applauded my ability to lead. But the only thing i've ever led was the charge toward oblivion, aka "success" in this world.
In the meantime, i entirely lost track of direction in my life. I applied and attended college for a year and i'm still not even slightly sure where i want to be headed. In the meantime i've gotten used to not trying or thinking for myself and have been swallowed by apathy, the disease our culture cries out vehemently against from our futons, energetically refusing to deal with it yet exerting no energy in its erasure.
A pastor at my church recently said that, politically, no one was right. The liberals are fighting for change but they don't have any greater purpose for doing so (after all, even 'peace' falls short if it is the ultimate goal). The conservatives have all their long-lasting morality and ethics to back their decisions and yet when it comes time to actually effecting the changes they desire, they tend to fall laughably short.
And our generation isn't helping. As Charles Wiley said to my Journalism class, "We stopped turning out adult models in the 1960s." What we have now is an entire group of people with no patience, no sense of planning or budgeting, and no cause for its rebellion. They cling happily to credit cards and gas-guzzling SUVs, plasma televisions and fancy restaurants, entirely unfazed by the reality of debt and self-destruction.
I live in a generation of teenagers. And the worst part is that all of these teenagers have mirrors.
Mirrors that they look in, touch up their makeup and slick back their hair, and walk away from, thinking it's all going to be okay. Because the mirror told them so.
And the mirror never lies.
Right?
