Living in an Era of Uncertainty: The Adolescent Mind of our Times

“Clearly the end is coming,” she said, pushing her bangs out of her face. They instantly fell back over her eyes, shading her beautiful face from the world. I contemplate what she means. “We all know it’s coming. It’s just a question of what it will be.”

I laugh, half because I think it’s what I’m supposed to do and half because I’m uncomfortable with the prospect that she might be serious. She shoves her bangs out of her face again and for an instant, I see the sparkle in her brown eyes, caked with dark eyeliner. In the moment that I can see her gaze, I find her studying me, as serious as the grave. She seems strangely excited and resolute. There is no trace of humor in her eyes.

“My vote is on zombies,” she says confidently. “You know, it could happen anytime.” She gestures wildly around the room as her bangs form a curtain again covering her face. As I follow the gesture of her arm, I suddenly see her fellow students, crazed and active in various states of frenetic energy, in a new and eerie light.

“It could be worse,” she says resolutely from behind the veil of her hair. I consider her statement. I guess she’s right.

She stares at me through strands of her black hair. There is conviction in her voice as she says, “I won’t go out without a fight.”

I nod. What else is there to say? There isn’t much more that any of us can hope for than to put up a valiant fight when the time comes. Zombies and all.

It was then, at that moment of prophetic importance for the single girl student professing what she knew to be true, that I realized that something fundamental had changed in the consciousness of my students. They live in a world that we, the adults, both fear and fail to understand. In their world, the reality of humanity’s frailty is omnipresent. Gone are the days of humanity’s bold and brazen position as the pinnacle of existence. Unbeknownst to those of us whose brains have ceased growing, the world as we know it no longer exists. Humanity is no longer the apex of a complex hierarchy. The teens of today know what we, the adult world, can only grasp at with frail, flimsy comprehension.

We are not the top of anything. And our end will come.

The children of the twenty-first century are the prophets, the realists, and the planners. They are aware at every moment, in every way, of the fact that our tenuous existence could cease at any moment. They ponder which end will consume them. They’re comforted by the simplicity of poems like “Fire and Ice.” They fear much more complex apocalyptic scenarios. They dread the lengthy progression of a slow, gradual extinction. They awaken each day understanding in a way that I, a cynic and pragmatist of the 1980s, can only begin to vaguely fathom.

They live in the era of the apocalypse. And we, their so-called educators, can only do our best to keep up with their evolutionary prospective.

It seems appropriate to proclaim here the purpose of this blog: I intend to explore how to teach trending literature to a population who grows in many ways but continues to stretch farther and farther from the literature we as a society hold so dear. They are amazing kids and they deserve our best. If my creativity can stretch half as far as theirs, I might be lucky enough to serve their needs from time to time.