Three days a week I sit in a car with two older ladies for at least 3 hours. This time is spent sometimes in silent thought, with NPR on the radio and each of us thinking about the acts we must do for pay that day, other days though are filled with deep intellectual conversation.
One of the woman is a mid 40s Filipino from a rich and traditional family, the other a early 50s Jamaican from Brooklyn with a husband who is tied directly to the NYSE. I, I am the anomaly here, the young one, the male, the 20something, as these two ladies begin the plans to transition from the manufacturing to the meditation chapters of life I am also in transition, but from the matriculate to manufacturer.
We share ideas, views, and laughs. Most of our conversation is spurred on by the NPR stories we are all half listening to as we interact with our phones, the portals to the information that directly affects our commute. Each of us are much more connected to these information interfaces than with each other the idea of complete silence in such a close proximity to other people seems rude to ignore so we have conversation, none of it being very exposing but all of it being much easier to take in than the silence that no conversation would require.
These conversations though have revealed to me the stark differences in the realities between generations. The death of dreams from one generation to the next and the rise of new dreams in their place. The three of us, me the professor of Sociology, the Filipino the socially aware para-legal, and the Jamaican from New York, all have our interest, albeit each distinctively different, in the #OccupyWallStreet.
I though feel more than a detached gross interests in this deviancy toward the status quo. I feel connected to the protesters. I am part of the 99%. I am part of this 'Forgotten Generation.' As much as I pretend to have it all together, as much as I seem to have it all together, I am reminded daily that it is all much more fragile than it should be.
I followed all the rules, did all of what I was told to do, for what? For a contract job (that don't get me wrong I do love but do wish it was more than just a part time semester to semester contract) that I am never certain what the future holds with it. I have the education, the clean criminal and credit record, the creative mind, the connections that impress, and the family that continually lifts me up. Even with all this I still find myself finding more simularities to those in Union Park than I do to those in my carpool. Why? Why do I feel more connected to seemingly dirty hippies in a park than to those who work in the buildings around me?
I think it because of the future outlooks. I share a future of uncertainity, of despair, of hardship. This, of course, due in small part to the refusal for the greatest generation and the silent generation to look beyond their own realities to those of future generations. The silent genration has finally spoken up and stolen away our future. Generation X has seen this reality and has stepped up its claim for a part of the dreams pie that those that preced partook of. This though has little to no pie for us, the Y, the Millienials, the lost boys of the 21st Century. We are this centuries forgotten generation.
Our schools are improving, our colleges are attempting to fix the issues surrounding cost and accessibility, companies are looking at new ways to train employees. All this though leaves a generation in the margins, our children will inherit a educational, political, and environmental world that is much improved; our parents will retire from jobs of meaning with no doubt of their social security ever being stopped. This generation, my generation, has been told from the beginning that we will not have social security, and know on top of that the way we were supposed to prepare for the future (that being of course through ample education and devotion to corporations) is now also not delivering. We are the forgottens. The generation that will have to fix the self obsessed actions of our parents cohort and prepare the way for a positive cosmos for our children. We though are the builders of this bright future. When great projects are undertaken the workman though, the builders themselves, rarely see the completion of the greatness. They rarely are able to bask in the awesomeness of their creation.
Right now though we have yet to be given the tools for this undertaking, right now we are still sitting at the gates, unmistakably taking up residence at the literally and physical doorways of power, Wall Street itself. We, as a generation, as standing up and demanding to let in on the conversations, demanding that we are allowed the dream the dreams we were promised, demanding that we be heard, demanding that now is the time for this great undertaking.
Now it should be noted that I am no way an anarchist or agreeing with the outrageous demands that some associated with this movement have stated. I am but a 20something that did every thing right all to end up nowhere near the promised lands that my teachers, my seniors, promised to me. I still believe this promise land exist but now I must prepare for a much longer journey there, all the time knowing that few ever see the promise lands that set out for. I hope that I can at least stand on a mountain and look beyond the last few obstacles that stand between the desert and the land of opportunity, or equality, of stability. Once I believed that I would have opportunities to enjoy the realities of this land but now my hope is to see at least have the confirmation, the certainty, that future generations will be able to enjoy. My role is not that of resident but of trailblazer towards it.
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