A hundred years have passed but the battle has only adapted to fit the circumstances.
It is no longer the fate of the world at stake
that which moves us to question our place in it.
It is a new-found battle for our souls
that which burdens our existence.
Tell me, my beloved contemporary:
was not your youth spent being told
you’d have to excel in a world of fierce competition?
That the new “Kill or Be Killed” philosophy
would not translate itself into rifles and magazines
but currency and reputation?
Driven to rise one above another
we were expected to crush the old and the new alike.
But we stand the risk of crushing nothing
but ourselves in the process.
Once past the gates of adulthood
most of us question their purpose and identity
with all options available for the eyes to feast upon
but reality all too harsh to seize them
we find ourselves in a maze.
None of our superior education saves us from
the burden of purpose and meaning.
We continue swearing we will figure it all out
and yet, likewise, distractions and side-quests keep popping up.
And then, there are those like myself.
Those whose purpose has, for the longest time now,
been rather clear to them.
And yet, not even with all our might
do the gates yield open for us either.
And so I ask, which fate is worse:
To wander in the doubt of knowing not what one wants
or to know so and never do what one is meant to do anyhow?
A new Lost Generation is what we are:
battered not by a battle for our bodies,
but by a battle for our souls.
