Renewed Manifesto

I was sitting in my office inadvertently listening to my colleague have a conversation with two female undergraduate students. It is a common occurrence; these conversations tend not to be private or sensitive. I am usually adept at tuning out such a conversation, but as the conversation continued I began to become astonished. The two young women were complaining that their lives were boring. My colleague reminded them that is was odd for a woman in her forties to give women in their twenties advice on how to have a more exciting life.  

The very next day I was driving in town and listening to the 80s radio station on Sirius/XM. One of my favorite, but rarely played, songs from the decade, Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” came on. Jackson soon sang a favorite stanza: “We – are young but getting old before our time / We’ll leave the T.V. and the radio behind / Don’t you wonder what we’ll find / Steppin’ out tonight.” My mind immediately raced back to the overheard conversation of the previous day. Perhaps replace the word radio with internet, but essentially it was the same message. The young women were not adventuresome enough to go out and live life. It is almost as if they expected an interesting life to come, knock on their dorm room door, and invite them out.

Life is a series of explorations. We must seek our own adventures and destinations. At the beginning of each year I consider what I will do, where I will go, and what goals I will attempt. Not doing so would result in an atrophy. It is difficult to understand how people become bored for long periods of time. Exploration can be done in our own backyard. Just walking down a street. Carefully examining the world is exploration. Travelling is a state of mind.

We are too polite to tell those young women that humans are all on a quest to find meaning, self-fulfillment and excitement. Perhaps that is something we find out on our own; however, no one does it for us.