The other day, I met a young man disappointed in life.

The other day, I met a young man disappointed in life.

In confidentiality, he told me that those who could play the game - which in context meant to work the networks and establish relations with individuals in influential seats – had gotten ahead of him, and now it seemed life reserved him little else other than mediocrity. From what I got out of a long conversation, he was more educated than the norm.

I’ve been thinking about this. Sometimes, a single sentence can trot in my head for days, months, even years. This one particularly, “those who know how to play the game will get ahead of me,” got me really upset. I see these “players” everyday. They walk in the streets of D.C., they drink in the cafes and bars and eat at Au Bon Pain during lunch.

Now I don’t claim to fairly evaluate their intellectual worth every time, but their demeanor almost always reminds me of the guys and gals I have been conversing with on occasions during the past decade. And if I am right - and I could be wrong - if they are who they seem to be, then they do not know what happened to the world during the 20^th century, much even less during the 19^th and the 18^th. They do not know who wrote what book and when, why they wrote it and why the book is famous today. When in company, they do not give opinions, they do not judge openly, they fear intimacy, and I won’t even begin to talk about sex. They did not drink wine in Latin America, they did not walk Le Louvre or question sanity in Amsterdam. They did not ponder upon the motions that set forth an era of global colonialism; they see communism through the prism of Russia in the 1960s. Their curiosity for metaphysics, philosophy and religion is formatted by the stereotypes, shallow and unnecessary, their knowledge of painters and architects superficial at best, and their sense and sensibility for anything nostalgic, poetic or metaphorical, wholly absent.  

This reality – a shallow society of American sheeps – I accept because I love this country. I love how it was built, I love its founding idealism and I have faith in the future it can bring. And I hope, perhaps naively, to live where the effort of education is both necessary for success and rewarded by those with experience.

Beyond this thought is nothing but optimism. Optimism for myself, for my life and my happiness which I no longer find in the heart of a social body but alone, understanding that I am only passing by, and that all that is to appreciate in this world is that which has been humanely constructed by the minds of an infinitely few.

This is not a depressing thought. This is just a change of wind in how to conceive the next fifty years. Should we quit smoking.