Ariana Brookes Brookes is a fourth-year English
student who wouldn’t read these columns either. E-mail her at
[email protected].
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The television series “That 70s Show” was originally
going to be called “Teenage Wasteland.” The idea was
that the teenage years are full of confusion, aimlessness and other
undesirables. I’m not sure exactly why they ditched that
idea, but my suspicion is that when they spoke to the
twenty-something-year-old actors on the show, they realized the
error of their ways. After all, if you’re going to call the
teenage years a wasteland, what could you possibly call the sludge
that follows them?
When we were teenagers we couldn’t wait to grow up, turn
21, move out of the house, and head off to college where we would
just party, party, party! Hmmm, yeah, if I could go back in time
like Michael J. Fox I’d beat my younger self over the head
with a stick. This, our college years, is the true wasteland!
“Clueless” would call what I’m referring to as
my “post-adolescent idealistic phase.” In other words,
these are the years when we contemplate life, our futures, our past
mistakes and our identities. These are the years when we are forced
to get a job to pay the rent, when we have to make ourselves go to
class, and when we have to learn to get along with other aimless
individuals called roommates. God, I hate it.
Illustration by ED OYAMA/Daily Bruin When trying to figure out
the exact age group of those who reside in this damp hole, my first
guess was that it begins when we graduate high school, and ends
when we graduate college. Then I turned my brain back on and
remembered the movie “Reality Bites”. They graduated
college, and their lives sucked just as much, if not more. My guess
is that Fitzgerald’s long road between the East Egg and the
West Egg begins somewhere around graduating high school and ends at
approximately 30. (If you do not get this joke, please go back to
high school and pick up a copy of “The Great Gatsby.”
It’s a good read.)
T.S. Eliot, too described this time in our lives in his poem
“The Wasteland.” (Yes, for all of you smart-asses,
that’s where I got the idea from.) I mean sure, maybe he was
really talking about the early part of this century, and not
necessarily about this time in our lives, but it works just the
same. According to Eliot, the wasteland is a time when everything
seems disjointed. We feel barren, as though nothing we work at will
ever produce fruit. We can’t help but fear the future and
mourn over our past. (As you’re reaching for the tissue,
remember that at least we can drink now, and that eases any
pain.)
Even romance gets distorted in this black hole. Remember back in
high school, how you’d fantasize about dating some hot
guy/girl, and that was all you needed for some good imaginative
fun? Imagine my horror when I realized that my dream date fantasy
had now turned into a dream marriage fantasy! I shocked myself into
a drunken stupor, and then sat down to contemplate.
Maybe this wasn’t always the time when people went through
their wasteland years. Maybe it really did belong to the teenage
years at one point. I mean, people used to settle down and get
married at our age. Married, for crying out loud! Now, however, as
that horizon moves farther and farther away, we are left with these
years during which to wonder if we’ll ever truly reach
it.
Will we ever accomplish our goals? Will we realize our dreams?
Will we still be single and working retail when we are 30? These
are the thoughts that we lose sleep over, the ones that awake us
from slumber gasping for breath. Maybe we are just being silly.
Maybe there is absolutely nothing to worry about. After all, for
thousands of years people having been successfully transitioning
into adulthood.
And yet this is what worries me. Perhaps Eliot had the right
idea when he dedicated “The Wasteland” to a time in
history, and not to a time in his own life. Could this sick feeling
in our stomachs not only be a result of our personal
disillusionment, but also of the general disillusionment of the
world at this time? Is the wasteland of our age a reflection of the
wasteland in which we now live?
In a country, a world, in which our leaders have no answers, how
can we be expected to? If those who we are supposed to admire are
confused about where to go, is it really that surprising that we
are as well?
It does not surprise me that we are worried, or worse,
apathetic, about our futures. After all, if this is the world that
we have to look forward to, there is really no assurance that we
will ever leave the wasteland behind in our wake.