I embarrassed myself in the front row last night. Or my 21 year old self would have said so. The DJ was shit but I was determined to make the night worth my while, so I shook my head, swayed my hips and had a little fun. I felt bad for his future failure at this profession but also remembered he was hired by the club to play so I didn’t feel that bad. Foul of me to have been rating his success, almost like his potential should have been pre-assessed. How could he be good from the start? Practice makes perfect and evidently we were witnessing it.
Like adults learning to swim, we often give ourselves a mental expiry date of when it’s too late to start at something. Swimming? Piano? Painting? Should’ve learnt that as a child. Much of this talk of you either got it or you don’t so we stick to our guns of what we know. Frontal lobe develops and it is consolidated in our mind that we can choose from a list of acceptable “adult” hobbies; run clubs, paint’n’sips, pub nights, pilates, coffee dates and bathroom bumps. Hobbies that fill our days and make a life of days on repeat.
Shuffled into camps of thought and the same stagnant air of tried, tested and true, we seldom stray to have a crack at something new. “Give it a go!” was a sentiment often thrown around in Australia, followed by “What’s the worst that can happen?”, and many of us, myself included, never think far enough to get to the latter half of the statement. In an unstable situation, usually personally and publicly, we are too preoccupied with the distractions of living in 2025 to pay more than 10 seconds of attention to all the things we rattle off as wanting to try – unless it's New Years of course. Then anything goes.
Being in a state of process is hard. Returning to the process of trying is even harder. As an adult it feels like reinventing a recipe you’ve cooked a million times but changing the measurements and still hoping for the same outcome. Fatigued by the largely academic learning that consumed our childhood, the thought of the trial and error involved with having at a go at something new is tiring. The idea sounds great, the action not so much. “Oh wow” they’ll say when you mention taking up kickboxing. When? We’ll never know. The only surety of trying something new is the process, and as individuals addicted to quick fixes and the speediest outcome for goddamn everything, the promise of process doesn’t exactly entice many. I mean why would it? Whose got the supposed time for a laborious time consuming process with an undetermined outcome and potential failure, actually most often failure.
It is hard to make things hard, especially for yourself. We seek out comfort in most situations so it seems rather antagonistic to aggravate the life we have. Starting a new something is one thing but in doing so, carving up a new life is another. The two-fold effect of changing your day to day to *cringe* change your life is something that makes us all rather insecure; the uncertainty of the outcome, the acknowledgement of being perceived as trying something new and our own liability for the repercussions, good or bad.
for as we change, so does our world - Willow Defebaugh
Many young people exist in a rather dysphoric mood when prepositioned with this “promised life” that the older generation still believes we will have. Disillusioned with mechanisms of capitalism, the mental burden of having a go at anything requires paying a higher fee, whether that be money, time or sacrifice.
We watch the closing of doors we’re dying to get in, as we attempt to build a life modelled for us – tried, tested and true. Reaching out a hand of desperation to grasp onto a dream that has been sold to us from day dot we can never grab a hold and find ourselves floating through. Untethered from a secure marking post by which we can gauge our life’s trajectory, Gen Z tends to come off with a nonchalant, disengaged attitude. The direct antithesis of our hyper awareness of and necessary engagement with all that is currently going awry. Some of us have turned away from the idea of “staying in the know” because of the fact that “giving a shit” about something at the moment will most likely result in some form of heartbreak. To not acknowledge anything that is going on is stupidity but to allow it to override and permeate our autonomy over the only life we will ever lead is also stupid.
To get this clear from the outset, hyper-individualism, self–optimisation and the over indulgence in self-help culture is not a reclamation of autonomy. That is a distraction away from community that inflates the ego and allows performative politics to exist - it is a form of the ‘you’ that perpetuates the “every man for himself” attitude that continues to plague global challenges. I am talking about autonomy in the capacity to act in accordance with your own morals and ethics uncoerced by the influence of supposed desires and other infringements.
Overstimulated, overburdened and unenthused we don’t often allow ourselves the quest of authentic-self pursuit because passion and purpose have become another limited resource. The general sense of impermanence coupled with a world constantly in flux means nothing is fixed. The fact that nothing stays the same is not a new discovery, it's destabilising but at the same time very freeing, and in a society that doesn’t give a f*** with individuals who don’t give a f*** this provides an opportunity of hope. Hope that if no one really cares about anything or anyone, caring or giving a f*** about anything may make greater change than falling into the shallow well of indifference.
I want to see the return of passion and nonchalance – be chalant!! Enough with this idc, whatever, sure bla bla of contemporary meaninglessness. It can be so hard to muster up belief in anything in a time where what was said a breath ago is no longer valid. But what we can hold as true is how we feel because only we can affirm that. Passion is a powerful feeling. Passion is intense and could fulfil the desire for devotion we seek amongst this perpetual quest for inner satisfaction. A devotion to something that we feel is a worthy pursuit and can inch us back towards our purpose not the one the self-help hamster wheel has you running towards.
I am getting fatigued as I write this as it already feels preachy and somewhat self-indulgent but I do feel passionate about the return to passion and the belief in a pursuit, whatever it may be. Reading Just Kids by Patti Smith was inspiring not because she was ticking off creative goals left right and centre but because she followed her interests and invested her time in what SHE thought was worthy, internalising and translating external influences rather than trying on a new identity everyday. She had a passion for activities and outings that brought self-fulfilment. A passion for objects, colours and moments. Passion for life to the point that she was open to being criticised and rejected for it. And at times, ok with being measured against herself. Her passions gave her purpose, not in a great world shifting way but in a day to day pursuit of continuing to invest in what stirred in her. A number of days are exactly what make a life and if you are a fly on the wall you might only get 30.
There is nothing inspiring about mediocrity. Passion and its pursuit may be full of failure but that still is not mediocrity. It is not nothing. To pursue something is to prioritise the process and the resilience that is required by it. To fail is to choose to try and to believe there is at least an otherwise. In this sense, it doesn’t matter what we do but the way we go about it. Pick something; protesting, parkour, picnicking, popsicles or partying and engage in daily devotions to stir a feeling of intrigue or intensity in a process worth tending to. It’s not pretty and may be full of dead ends but returning to a process-oriented life in which we allow our personal selves to build worlds filled with affection and drive towards a moment, object, feeling is an act of repair in a goal-oriented world. Neglecting personal passions will not solve the world in crisis, but the stagnation of self caused by the lost love of process will cause the worlds within us to die too. This isn’t the end. Today could be the beginning. All I ask is that you have a crack at it.
Are you a living thing that is dying or a dying thing that is living? - Emma Talbot
