The Lonely Generation
Susan Tu We are progressive and aggressive, soldiers by nature, the children of revolution forming an army against any small injustice that comes along but never quite finding that common enemy, never quite knowing what exactly we’re fighting for, because maybe our parents fought the last great war but we can’t shake the residual restlessness in our hearts so we keep marching and rallying troops: the millennial minutemen, ready to take on the next great tragedy for a tragedy will surely come. We are emphatic and pragmatic, we do not want to be confined into rigid boxes #downwithstandardsofsociety and yet we still frown at the mirror and feed off red-circle notifications and heart-shaped affirmations in this new age of social gluttony and it’s so damn hard because there’s 7,397,610,805 people in the world and that’s 7,397,610,804 people to beat; if everyone is successful, if everyone is pretty, does that mean no one is? We are romantic and pedantic, raised on the adage of independence and identity-- always be yourself, never bend to another’s will-- until one day we woke up and suddenly realized we were alone and maybe we haven’t figured out how to compromise, how to not be two halves of a whole but two wholes of something greater, because when our mothers taught us to be strong we became unmalleable instead and now we can’t stop walking away, stubborn heads held high, convinced the next love will be better… don’t we deserve better? We reach for solidarity and prosperity, to be liked and to be remembered and to matter because there’s nothing more dreadful than the feeling of vertigo as we fall into obscurity. We reach with arms outstretched until the tips of our fingers graze the edge of something real and we grasp only empty air. |
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About the Author:
Susan Tu is an accountant by day and writer by night, which kind of makes her a superhero. She studied creative writing at Cornell University where she won the George Harmon Coxe Award and has been published in the About Place Journal.
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Susan Tu is an accountant by day and writer by night, which kind of makes her a superhero. She studied creative writing at Cornell University where she won the George Harmon Coxe Award and has been published in the About Place Journal.
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