"I don't know why we are doing this" - Jacques Derrida

I was talking with the eloquent and observant Heather Blom while I was cleaning my desk today and came across an old reading pack from my undergrad with this statement of Derrida's in bold. It was a poignant and almost cinematically choreographed moment. Heather was talking about all the expectations being thrust upon our generation and how they are being consistently abandoned and disappointed. We are the feebly striving generation of decline. Why are we doing this?

After an undergrad which had us continuously propelling upwards to what we assumed were prosperous and promising futures, we are finding ourselves disappointed and, probably worse, disappointing.

I am single, living alone with my increasingly aggressive tabby, struggling to contrive a thesis which I am quite clearly not qualified to be undertaking, trying to stay fit, trying to eat well, trying to keep my laundry basket and kitchen sink from over flowing, and not even trying to make the friends which I am so plainly and painfully without here in this strange city. I don't know how to do it all. I am expected to be domesticated, educated, socially adept, athletic, health conscious, a competent correspondent, fashionable, cultured and well rested.

I feel like Stevie Smith's narrator in my long-time favourite poem;

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

I know there is nothing less sympathetic than the winging of an upper middle class darling struggling to achieve perfect before she even dares to compare herself to the staggering depression experienced by this ill-fated poet. I feel like that is the irony of my generations Grecian tragedy; to be so entirely blessed with opportunity and completely unable to achieve anything with it, least of all contentedness. I am Alexandra.

I don't want to be obnoxiously meloncholic and narcissistic. I want to be able to do it all without self pity.

I'll work on it