as we grow older, it becomes more and more apparent that our generation is not going to evolve into a facsimile of the last, that i am not going to become my father. this may seem a trivial statement, but when i was in school i always assumed that a switch turned on when you reached a certain age that made one act like an "adult" -- it's obvious now that there is no inflexion point, that our generation is capable of stretching in different ways, but never of holding dear the same things that our parents did. this is either distressing or an incredible relief depending on how you think about it. distressing because the goals of our parents - particularly growing up in the 60s and 70s - were attainable, whereas ours are either nebulous or ephemeral or both; a relief because we have nothing to live up to: by having a mutable benchmark for success, we also excuse every one of our failures.

i suppose this is nothing new for, say, americans - they've had generation gap issues arising from dramatically time-compressed changes in inter-generational opportunities for decades - but it is new for us, and i don't think that we cope as well with the disparity. maybe it's to do with having the whole confucian values story force-fed down our throats from young, but the people with whom i've discussed this seem far more fixated on the distress than the relief. on some level, they wish they did have the same desires as their parents, and balk at how easily realised these are. those not in the upper class are glad to be their father's second chance.

we are afraid to own up to our differences to ourselves, and yet we still carry the obvious and indelible marks of having grown up in a different world. i peruse the blogs of friends and acquaintances, some pushing 30, some married, and they cheerfully admit to playing WoW while pondering why their existence seems so dull and dreary. they're still waiting for the switch to flick on, while in the mean time the goalposts have moved, and the world is waiting for them to realise that.

Currently reading:
The Sea - John Banville

40 things that make me happy
#1: Coffee
Especially that very first taste in the morning, the sip that tells you that the night is over, and that makes the day possible.