So that’s it then. We stay up until the darkest hours of the night writing tragedies about our dearly beloveds that we have yet to meet, sometimes ending in our own survival, but often not. Because that form of conflict is one that remains until we meet our own tragic end. It is anguish that remains unquenchable, a form of shallow breathing, leaving no excess passion with which to do or change or create anything of any worth. We are standing still until we fall to the ground, confused, cold, and very dead. But pleased with ourselves for all of the pages we filled with our innermost thoughts, our secret hurts and broken hearts wrapped and bound in age-old mistrusts, conveyed through codes and keys and capital letters, with cheap rhymes and soulless longings for a simple freedom from the shackles of what our generation must inherit, war. We must inherit war. And yet this is seemingly not the worst of it. Without falter I can say the curse of this generation is the inability of the previous to inspire even a measure of the same hope that our forerunners exhaled casually. As foot soldiers and machine gunners, volunteers and willing men, pilots and captains, they locked with fate in a hand-to-hand struggle for survival. Fearless. Yet as their grandsons and daughters grow older, they are unable to conceptualize that human regression can end, and a true change can occur. They refuse the notion that my generation can overcome their follies, flaws and failures and rise. Rise to new heights and accomplish truly incredible things with our lives. We are the second golden generation. That truth has been denied to us, but enough is enough. We will take faith by force. We are more than our mothers and fathers ever aspired to become if we choose to be. We are all that we choose to be. But choices are such a frivolous thing, and mean commitment. So rather than choose anything, we will stand still and write to you of what we see.
Childhood is like a long walk up a short hill. As we reach the top we see an edge and realize we’re being led toward. At the point of adulthood we are thrown from the edge and told that we better learn to fly. We swear we aren’t ready, but in life you rarely are.
So some learn to fly before they hit the ground. They enjoy being on top. Others don’t. They hit the ground and stay there. And a few catch a ledge on the way down. Hanging in the balance they dream of the sky but fear what lies at the bottom. Their fate is to live between two fates, wanting to change, but never making it that far.
So that’s it then. I guess I’d better learn to fly.
