Thoughts

"You shouldn't be feeling this way at your age" is something I hear repeatedly from people, and it usually comes from people who are older than I am.  This can mean one of two things: either my feelings are the issue, or my age is the issue (or the issue is somehow related to or stems from either of these).  As I see it, this is either a subtle and seemingly innocuous incarnation of ageism (if my age is the issue), or an highly-preferable invalidation of my feelings (albeit unintentional, or largely so).

Ageism-- like racism and sexism and homophobia-- promotes discriminatory feelings based on an uncontrollable and oftentimes unrelated or non-causal factor.  While it is permissible to say that a person of a certain age, race, sex, or sexual preference might be more likely to display certain attributes-- those attributes which have a direct causal relationship with age/race/sex/orientation-- we oftentimes confuse causality with other forms of correlation (i.e. coincidence).  An elderly person, for example, is much more likely than a child to have rheumatoid arthritis; a person of full-blooded African descent is more likely to have a dark complexion (protection against the sun) and dark irises (absorption of intense sunlight, aiding sight), while a person of full-blooded Irish descent is more likely to have light skin (increased absorption of vitamin D in low-level light) and a lighter coloration of the irises (refraction/reflection of sunlight into the pupils, aiding sight); men and women have entirely different reproductive organs as well as correspondingly-different levels of various sexual hormones; and, of course, a homosexual person is more likely to want to engage in sexual acts with a person of his or her own sex.  There are only so many things we can correctly assume based on a person's age (or race, or sex, or sexual orientation).  Feelings are not among these things.

Feelings are what they are and cannot be helped.  Emotions are a part of the human experience and will always arise-- and some may persist.  Problems arise in regards to how we treat our feelings and whether or not we hold onto them desperately or let them run their course as we both experience and observe ourselves experiencing them.  Some of us allow our emotions to dictate the whole of our lives; we sit in the passenger seat (or the back seat-- some of us are tied up in the trunk) and allow our unchecked feelings to take us wherever they will.  I have gone through spells where this has been the case, though I feel like I'm making strides to live harmoniously with my feelings.

Now, after all this splitting of hairs: I understand that most people who tell me "you shouldn't be feeling this way at your age" really mean that the indisputable fact of my feeling a certain way at my ([relatively] young) age is, at best, unfortunate.  Ideally, yes, it would be nice to be more carefree and less jaded (and skeptical, and disenfranchised) at "my [young] age," but the issue is this: I see many problems with how the world works; more specifically: I see many problems with the way the society-into-which-I-was-born works.  I want to fix these problems as they pertain to my own personal life.

Despite my age, I am not naive enough to think that I can freely and immediately change the world; my issues with control are steadily dwindling, and my primary concern is living a life Immanuel Kant might be proud of-- though my imperative is perhaps more hypothetical than categorical (atheistic existentialism with a Kantian twist?).  I will live my life as I see fit; I will live as I would expect anyone else in my situation to live, and I will exercise self-discipline.  It is possible to at once live a model life while living for oneself; it is possible to live for oneself while exercising selflessness, compassion, and empathy.  This is my goal.  It's a high standard to live up to, but only because I let my ego and its desires get in the way.

I do complain a lot.  I complain instead of taking action.  I complain instead of meditating.  I complain instead of creating.

And here we have arrived at something that's much closer to the root of the problem.  The problem is not my age, nor is it my feelings.  The problem is, perhaps, my unchecked ego and its self-preserving habits of avoidance and indulgence.