loss

Many of my youthful memories involve passively eavesdropping on various phone conversations in my house. I was an introverted child devoted to his video games, but also capable of multitasking well enough to shoot noobs, guzzle coke, and listen to my mother on the phone. As a result, hundreds of anecdotes swim in my memories like little tadpoles doomed never to grow into proper frogs. Frog-memories. Memory-frogs. Whatever, man.

One such memory was of a young girl entering puberty. This girl was experiencing great distress over the phenomenon of growing up. A hither-to perfect child, focused in her studies and obedient in her manners, she found herself anxious and distraught at the introduction of such foreign objects like bras and tampons into her daily life, and rebelled for an exceedingly long period of time to a level that, compared to her previous demeanor, was rather shocking.

My mother deemed that she had experienced a childhood that was, perhaps, exceedingly good, and puberty for this girl meant the end of all she knew and held dear. My mother went on to conclude this girl’s reactions as evidence of original sin – that even the best families with the most excellent children cannot escape the taint of Adam. I would, of course, reach a different conclusion.

I think of all this as I ponder a commonality among some of my social groups that I find to be wholly disturbing. How can someone who is but twenty-four years-old truly look at all the world and see nothing but what once was, when “once was” is such a limited and incomplete definition, one borne of the naivety of youth? Was his childhood really so glorious that he is now permanently embittered to whatever new experiences he has yet before him? Or was he like this from the start, complaining to his mother that her milk was wholly inferior to the efficiency and convenience of the umbilical cord?

I would be content to consider this a mere anomaly if I didn’t see it in varying forms across every spectrum of life. I am terrified to consider what kind of old age these folk will experience. Oh, dear Sally, that Halo 6 you’re playing is absolute rubbish compared to the original Unreal Tournament! Everything after that – absolutely terrible, but they had the right idea, back then, mhm. There has always existed a mighty contingent of humanity that opts to criticize rather than to create, but I deem that this is a unique extreme of this population, and one that threatens to strangle itself with standards that cannot be matched.

I’ll leave this with a conversation.

[psimon] We call it “golden-age syndrome” because we forget that the golden age has a much more accurate name and the complaints about SK and games are symptoms of a more profound disease.
[psimon] Childhood.
[salmon] excuse me while my head explodes
[psimon] np
[salmon] i guess my initial question then is
[salmon] i loved my childhood well enough
[salmon] it was pretty great, plenty of magical moments
[salmon] but i have to say i’m enjoying adulthood a lot too
[psimon] Do you complain about Golden Age?
[salmon] i guess not
[psimon] I don’t think you do, but I’m asking just to be sure.
[psimon] Well, there you go, Salmon.
[psimon] You enjoy your adulthood and do not complain about the Golden Age you experienced before this current stage of your life.
[psimon] You have just come to understand the true nature of golden age syndrome
[psimon] Some people will spend the rest of their lives trying to figure this out.
[salmon] but i guess i still wonder
[salmon] let’s say ted had a really fantastic childhood
[salmon] the kind filled with technowonder
[salmon] how could he be poisoned against everything so quickly, before he’s even experienced it?
[psimon] I have my answer, but the answer is only worth anything when you’ve made it yourself. I’ll share mine not to deliver the answer to you, but to give you something to think about while you make your own
[psimon] I’ve found throughout this “real world” that many people.. scores of people.. are unhappy. Miserable. They complain, mope, get angry, any host of reaction, but at the core there is a lack of contentment.
[psimon] thinking about this and a few good books I was lucky enough to read…
[psimon] Some people grow into adults without realizing that contentment is a choice.
[psimon] So they go around looking for all these things that could be wrong, all these needs to try and satisfy…
[psimon] forgetting that the external world isn’t where your emotions are created
[psimon] its an internal choice, being happy, and people who don’t know that often don’t do that.
[psimon] children don’t have as powerful a capacity to resent or be displeased
[psimon] and the only exclusively human thing in this world is hypocrisy
[psimon] People who grow old without growing up become jaded and convinced that they’re right.