As an idea, emotion has been with us for a very long time. As a realization, or something you actually practice, it is relatively new. The term "unconditional-love" did not exist in history until the late sixties. That is something to think about. I have more to say about this, but I have probably left my story too far behind by now, and I should probably get back to it. I will just leave this thought with this: We, the real children of the sixties, were raised in the one thing that still baffles the baby-boomers: emotion. We have a better feel for it, and need you to step down and trust us a little more than your parents didn't trust you. The fact that we know, and don't care, is how we were labeled Gen-X'ers in the first place. I for one am tired of watching the youth of today be so comfortable in the history of things that they can not see a need for any emotion more defined than the old fashioned "Groovy!"
Of
course, in high school, none of us knew this, but some of us were beginning to
figure it out. No one was obsessed with
it, of course, except me. When nobody
knows you, and everyone you meet wants you to be there for them, many things
never see the light of day, for anyone’s eyes.
By the time my senior year at high school was over, I had a very
regimented seven line a day habit. One
when I wake up, one before school, one at lunch, one after school, one on my
break at work, one after work, and one to sleep on. No one ever accused me of being a user, but some of my friends at
McDonalds were beginning to suspect my hyper-activity, and moodiness. I have a real surprise for them: the
moodiness was my natural personality.
It comes with following your feelings blindly.
When the end of my senior year came, I
asked Jennifer to be my date to the prom.
She agreed, as she knew what I had been going through. I had a girlfriend for most of my senior
year, and that relationship was stressed to the limits. Jessica, the object of my passion, had a
father who had never graduated high school, and married his wife of twenty
years after an imminent pregnancy. As
if the saga was not sad enough, the child was stillborn. The one female that recognized my gentle
ways, and demanded to hold on to me, had to compete with a pair of pathetic
parents who were so desperate to make sure that what happened to them did not
happen to their only child that they absolutely believed I was the devil. Not that they had ever really tried to see
what life was about, or how the times had changed. In their eyes I was the most evil thing that ever existed. It was a cliche judgement. I was a male, and that was threatening
enough to forgo trying to meet me as a person. Just because a rumor that Jessica and I had made out all the way
home, on a bus, from an away football-game was true was no reason to think of
me as a rapist.
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