Ennui

My next book will most likely be a series of essays, though that’s always subject to whim. I’ve been writing some — as I quoted from in my last post. I’ve decided to share an essay that I wrote about ennui. More specifically, it’s about youth issues. I’ve written many stories, plays, and poems, but no speeches for over two years. I’ll be reading at the monthly poetry event in July; I think it’s time to return to my days of youth-issue speeches, hence me wanting to share this essay titled, Ennui:

Ennui

Of the many ideas I thought of for my writing, one of my favorites was a book on the development of community. Places to meet and simply do things with other people are lacking — third places, as they’re called. Community, though, extends beyond a location: it’s the people you interact with meaningfully on a regular basis. The sad state of the modern world is both the lack of third places themselves and the ability to so much as attend events if they are offered.

Recently, what brings me the greatest sadness is hearing the phrase, “Sorry, I can’t make it, I’m working.” It breaks my heart because there are many events that simply cannot happen because the only time they can happen is between the hours of 9am to 5pm. As an event organizer, I suffered that issue: “Yes, we can host this event series, but nobody will be able to make it at 2pm on Wednesdays.” The retiree community was going strong, meanwhile. I always found it funny attending these odd-hour events like art gallery openings here in Iceland only to find that I’m the youngest person by approximately 20 years.

Work is good. It provides structure, community, discipline, general opportunity, and potentially so much more. The problem is the necessity. It begins to feel hopeless at times. The respect I have for my parent coworkers is immeasurable: how they work and work regardless of how they are feeling or what is going on in their personal lives. They work tirelessly for the sake of their children and their families. A day off — let alone attending an event — is a luxury.

I had a very memorable conversation once at work. The simplified version is that some coworkers and I were talking about how we would never be able to have children. Finding an apartment for two people is doable. Finding an apartment for two people and a baby is a stretch. Two children? Forget it. Paying the bills is hard. Supporting a child is a job. At least we can hand our children to daycare so we can work more… and that is the essence of the problem we face today regarding community. The fact that we can’t even raise our own children bodes very poorly for society.

I could write on and on about children and parenting, but I want to focus on the issue of youth. I served as a youth ambassador in an American delegation to the Russian government a few years back. Later, I spoke to the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. I poured out my heart and soul to these people, but I saw how the systems work. Once, I got to have dinner with some of the men who rule the world. They are not bad people. None of them truly are. However, they do not grasp our situation and certainly not its direness.

The rhetoric going around America, as an example, is that there are so many jobs but no workforce. “People don’t want to work.” Either that, or people don’t take pride in their work or are simply outright bad workers, say the employers. My business is people. I deal in stories. I’ve travelled the world, far and wide, from Antarctica to Svalbard. There aren’t many people by the poles, but everywhere between, I met so many people and heard so many stories of difficulties and hardships. It’s not a complicated matter. The story of the world is this:

The young people (and many others) don’t want to work because what is the point? Ennui. I can wake up at 6:30am five days a week, miss all the events in the day, work a draining job for minimum wage, be disrespected by so many people along the way, thus draining all my energy, return home at 4pm, maybe 5pm, then be too exhausted to do anything else. I can do that every day for the remainder of my youth. In the end, I won’t be able to afford an apartment. I’ll be renting until the day I die while the people I pay rent don’t need to work because my labor pays their bills. Their property values go up while my rent also goes up — they make more while I make less. My own wages never change. I have no retirement fund. I don’t have the time or energy to meet people or go to events. And worst of all, my employer may be nice to me, but if I get too burnt out, I can be replaced in the snap of a finger. I’ll never be promoted. I’ll never afford children. At least I can afford a car that breaks down every few months and a one-week vacation once a year. Do I care if the customers enjoy the sandwiches I make? Not really.

Obviously, not everyone is in a situation like that. Sadly, many are. So when the youth are frustrated, this is what so many people in better life circumstances don’t understand. A common counterargument is that we can go to school, get higher degrees, start side-hustles, start our own business, etc. I agree. I did that, and that was my own escape. I went to school, I started my PhD, I had a beautiful career. It wasn’t satisfying, so I gave it all up to move to Iceland. Then, I did it again: starting side-hustles, starting my own business. I did a lot. I know other people who did the same.

But the problem is this: Why should everyone be expected to be the best of the best and rise to the top of the top just to be given a chance to live a life? The life I described previously — and the feeling of hopelessness — is not a failure of the individual. It is a failure of the system. People should be able to work less: for example, to raise their child. People should be allowed the opportunity to live in reasonable conditions. Not like me and many others I know where I spent many months in a tiny bedroom, paying $1,000/month to live with five other people, stepping on my roommate’s contacts she threw on the floor of our one bathroom, never being able to use the kitchen because it was always busy, storing food in my closet with my clothes because I had no other space.

With hard work and dedication, it’s possible to get out of situations like that, but remember our friend, ennui? I wish I had better words to express that feeling of utter meaningless and hopelessness. We are perfectly capable to fight, fight, fight, fight, and keep fighting for the sake of our future. But what’s the point? Shall I spend the rest of my life washing dishes? Sure, I can do well for myself after a well-disciplined ten years. But is it worth ten years of my life to improve my circumstances? Even fields requiring higher education are difficult. Yes, people can succeed in them. But why do all my minimum-wage coworkers have master’s degrees, even PhDs?

What does all this have to do with community? Quite simply, there are bigger worries at hand than living a life. Survival takes precedence. It’s so much easier to stay at home on the computer when there are hardly any third spaces around and people lack the energy to attend them regardless. It is people that give life meaning, ultimately. The modern world removes access to people. Not directly, maybe not intentionally, yet this is what makes the, “I can’t make it, I have work,” so painful to hear.

There are good jobs, good workplaces, good careers, good work communities. There are good lives that come directly from work. I built my life in Iceland from my own workplace; though I had to do that entirely myself: work 9am-5pm, then do community building from 6pm-8pm. Unfortunately, not all opportunities are equal. Good is hard to find. It’s a systematic failure. And then we, the youth of this world, are blamed for it. We are blamed for not wanting to work, for being lazy, for not being good workers, for isolating ourselves, for poor behavior, for lack of social skills, for lack of education, and so on. There’s a reason social movements are increasingly popular — things like anti-war protests, social justice groups, even hate groups. They give people the slightest hint of a voice to express their dissatisfaction. They also give people a hint of the community they are so lacking.

There is always a reason for how people act and behave. Everything that everyone does has a reason. Ennui is a disease spreading across the world. It gives birth to both art and chaos. As for dealing with it, the solution is to turn it into a productive force: motivation to act on creating a better world.

During my brief stint in politics, I listened to men talk about throwing nuclear missiles like toys. They spoke about a nuke here or there to cause a nuclear tsunami to wipe out the population of this or that place. I spoke to them about youth issues. They were more concerned about whose nuke was bigger.