Hoping to Myself

Dear Eugene,

Anyone who thinks there's genuine hope in this world hasn't gotten oneself a teenager.  Or two.

Is it really that bad, being a parent of teenagers?

Worse than my parents had had it, I say, for sure.  I kinda regret not giving my parents a run for their money and now can't even claim solace on the basis of karma.

But I feel for the teenagers.

Here I have words to make sense of my share of suffering, words that I can call my own and have taken years and tears to claim.  How about them?

They want to be themselves, but in doing so must be like everyone else.  I am sure a case can be made that many of us never really grow out of our adolescence, but still the intensity of such contradiction, self-betrayal, finds no healthy language during teen years to modulate itself, especially when the lexicon and syntax of the quest is gladly and generously supplied by adults who know how to exploit the unhealth.  Mobile phone is the worse invention since the atomic bomb.

Well, it's hopeless.  Seriously, Eugene.

There's a surface layer to life and that's where we trade on, exchanging bankable remarks and matter-of-fact glances, hoping no one is gonna speak the unspeakable, that life is one big exercise in futility and meaninglessness.

"What's the point?"  The best question posted to me so far this year.  I asked a sick man to eat a little and he suggested me to try my own words.  He had not another word for me that day.

Luxury, that's what teenagers have.  When a quest is still probable because doubt is still possible.

Yours, Alex