Make friends with the other people in your generation, because you are stuck with them for life.

This is not a conclusion I came to lightly, because I am a total Generation X guy, and so this would mean I would have to try to like my fellow Generation X members, and frankly, what’s to like? We are a bunch of sullen, resentful, moody, depressive, touchy loners who refuse responsibility for our own problems, are filled with a completely unrealistic unfocused resentment, and try to replace warmth and cooperation with post-modern context bashing and bitter, sarcastic irony.

Of course, that’s mostly out parents’ fault.

But the thing is, you don’t get to pick your generation. As much as I (like millions of other Generation X types) have thought I would have made an awesome hippie, and as much as I admire and support all those crazy Millennial kids with their idealism and hipsterism and indie worship, I can’t ever be one of them.

I am Generation X I am stuck with it. Might as well try to make peace with it.

No matter how I might feel about my generation, they will still be the only people who understand my references, who share the same television memories (NORM!) and pivotal historical moments (Shuttle…uh, yeah. ) and sense of style. They will still be the generation who maps to my idea of “normal” no matter how open minded I might try to be. They are the people who had the same stickers on their binders in school, the ones who know we were “indie” back when it was called “alternative”, and who are the last generation to have Saturday Morning mean cartoons and sugary cereals and pajamas.

And, quite frankly, these are the people who will always be roughly as old as I am, and hence will represent the most stable and appropriate dating pool even when we are all cranky, bitter senior citizens still blaming our Baby Boom parents for everything even when they are long dead.

So even though, in a very Gen X way, I sullenly resent the rest of my generation, and am more than willing to bitch and whine about what a bunch of whiny bitches we are, it appears we are stuck with one another, and maybe, just maybe, once we fully realize that, we will summon up the verve to finally get the fuck over ourselves a little and learn to get along.

At least we can get all misty-eyed about cartoons from the eighties together.

And that is part of the problem, from my point of view. Mostly, what we share, besides a tendency towards apathy, is nostalgia, and I frankly don’t like nostalgia.

I am not claiming to be immune to it, mind you. I get all gooey inside when I listen to the Hong Kong Phooey theme (stupid show but AWESOME theme) or when something reminds me of a favorite Muppet Show moment like anyone else with memories.

I just don’t like it.

See, the problem is, nostalgia just plain isn’t objective. There is no logical reason why I should enjoy remembering something any more than I enjoyed the thing I am remembering. If the thing being remembered hasn’t changed (and how could it? It’s in the past and the past is cast in stone, fixed forever) than why should how I feel about it change?

It makes no sense. It’s not objective. And I am a person who puts a great deal of stock in my ability to see things objectively, as they really are, without illusion, delusion, or prejudice. It is what makes me, in the deepest sense, a philosopher, a seeker of truth, and that is something that runs down to the very core of my being. I absolutely depend on my sense of inner perception and insight to provide the framework of my existence, the foundation of my whole psyche, and therefore anything which interferes with my objectivity will be something I resent and try to eliminate from my mind by whatever means are necessary.

But, being a pragmatist, I must reluctantly recognize that nostalgia is not something I can simply wish away in my mind, as much as it offends my sense of myself as an objective and future-oriented person. It is simply a part of the human mind’s natural progression as a memory storing device, rewarding us with pleasure for retrieving a long-lost memory and hence refreshing it.

So what the hell. I guess we Generation X types can at least get together on that.

Making we can bond over how much we resent each other and the label Generation X.