like a pair of bottle rockets

“What was most attractive about micro­lending was what it was not, what it made unnecessary: any sort of collective action by poor people coming together in governments or unions. The international development community now knew that such institutions had no real role in human prosperity. Instead, we were to understand poverty in the familiar terms of entrepreneurship and individual merit, as though the hard work of millions of single, unconnected people—plus cell phones, bank accounts, and a little capital—was what was required to remedy the Third World’s vast problems. Millions of people would sell one another baskets they had made, or coal they had dug out of the trash heap, and suddenly they were entrepreneurs, racing to the top. The key to development was not doing something to limit the grasp of Western banks, in other words; it was extending Western banking methods to encompass every last individual on earth.”

– Thomas Frank, “Nor a Lender Be”, Harper’s

“There is this pressure to make sense of everything in the moment, to accelerate the creation of the meaning we derive from an experience. I think – and I already told you I am 26 so maybe this is just an old lady talking, right – the overwhelming deluge of all this “Fuck! I’m in My Twenties!” stuff written and liked and reblogged by people who are actually in their twenties accelerates this unnecessarily, and creates these self-defined, self-fulfilling norms. So I wonder if, the way I could only separate the universal and particular shittyness of public transportation only after I left DC, I won’t know what it meant to be in my 20s until I they’re behind me. Maybe the stuff we’re saying “fuck!” about is just what it’s like to be a conscious adult in this moment of history; maybe this is just the way we live now.”

–

Lindsay Zoladz wrote this in 2012, upon the occasion of her turning 26. The post has stuck with me. Today, it’s my turn–I’ll be 26 tomorrow, February 16th. 

What sticks out to me in this thoughtful and well-written post is Lindsay’s acknowledgement of the pressure we feel to memorialize our lives as we’re living them. As Jeremy mentions here, the atemporality of the internet means that the concept of “old” and “new” have become meaningless. Similarly, as we have gotten used to documenting every moment of our lives, we frame our experiences as future memories. I know I do, though I try to fight it. But whether I resist the urge to Instagram the concert I’m attending or not, I can’t escape that this is our reality. Time, at least in our imagination, no longer insistently moves forward, as anyone who encounters Facebook memories on a daily basis can attest. 

As I cross the invisible threshold into my no-longer-early-20′s, I think about the paradoxes of my personal story, and of our 21st-century existence. I was raised in the woods but live in the city, and I can’t decide which I love more. Human connection, what Julie Delpy’s character in Before Sunrise calls the “little space in between” people, seems to me to be where the important experiences of our lives occur. Yet I spend most of my time alone on my computer. I’ve twice gone on five-day silent meditation retreats and have a longer one planned for this year. Those experiences have proven to me humans’ ability to physically alter our own minds. I know that with hard work, I can make myself a better person, and make the experience of living more rewarding. But I’m unsure if I have the motivation to get there. 

In 2014, I wrote an essay for Pitchfork (which Lindsay edited) about the irony that young people feel nostalgia so strongly. Like everyone, we yearn to tell our little stories, and today it’s easier and more tempting than ever. The story of my own life seems muddled, but despite Didion’s protestations, I think that’s something I need to accept. Our time provides no narratives, but perhaps living in the chaos of timelessness is more honest than crafting some neat vision of our existence. I can choose to spend my time alive building a story that will slip through my fingers like sand. Or, I can find a nice seat, and observe the transformations as they come. As Joanna would say–In the river of time, stand brave: Time moves both ways.