Lately I’ve been working on an essay that deals with the Gen Z/Millennial urge to go no-contact. It’s partly a response to Kaitlyn Tiffany’s essay Suddenly Everyone is Toxic, partly me sorting through my own complicated feelings about being estranged from my mother. Mom and I both have birthdays this month, plus the onslaught of the holidays tends to amplify my questions around my decision to cut her off. Did I do the right thing? Am I just protecting myself? Am I being needlessly cruel? Are both sort of true? As much as Tiffany and others like to caricature the youths for calling everyone who disagrees with them “toxic,” the lived reality of family estrangement is infinitely more complex than a huffy text exchange.
We’re living through a time of rapid social change. It’s social destruction, really. Gen Z/Millennials have examined the systems we were handed and found them wanting. We want a world free from prejudices like racism, sexism, and homophobia. We want more empathy, more justice. In our eagerness to reform, we’re burning down institutions left and right: leaving the church in droves, avoiding marriage and parenthood, slagging off capitalism, voluntarily estranging ourselves from our parents.
I can understand why this makes some nervous, especially older folks. Once we’ve torn down the monuments to their heroes, who or what will we coalesce around? Who can we point to if even George Washington is canceled? We swarm to stan the celebrity-of-the-moment and just as quickly learn they are “problematic” (meaning anything from run-of-the-mill asshole to closet Nazi) and gather round for our virtual public stonings. Can any god live up to our woke, anti-colonialist scrutiny?
Perhaps it’s the nature of youth to be idealistic. We have our dreams of how we want things to turn out, we also have the hard compromises of day-to-day life. The truth is, we are all hypocrites because none of us can live up to all our ideals at all times. I abhor slave labor and I still occasionally buy cheap clothes that were probably produced in sweat shops. Life is complicated. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to do better, but it also means a certain amount of humility for ourselves and grace towards others.
As I’ve been chewing on all this, Advent proceeds apace. We’re in week 2 now, a controversial week! Depending on your denomination, it might represent peace, faith, comfort, or the journey of Mary & Joseph towards Bethlehem. For me, thinking of ideals and reality and journeys puts me in mind of the Wise Men.
The story of three dudes (magicians? astrologers? Zoroastrian priests?) setting off in the darkness to follow a star has always spoken to me; I’ve always felt like I’m fumbling in the darkness, looking for Truth. Maybe I’m conflating the Magi with Choose Something Like a Star, one of my favorite poems. The whole thing is short and worth reading, but here’s the back half:
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It [the star] asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
The thing that makes a lot of people uncomfortable with Christian deconstruction is that they don’t know the outcome of it. They say things like, “It’s okay to ask questions up to a point,” the point being, “as long as you keep believing the things that are important to my faith.” But we can’t both simultaneously seek Truth while clinging to a predetermined outcome. You can’t follow a star while refusing to leave your front yard.
And that’s scary. On a personal level and a cultural level, we don’t know if, how, or when all this turmoil will be resolved. I don’t know how things will work out with my mom, if I’ll have regrets about taking space from her. As a nation we don’t know if we’ll be able to build new common ground away from institutions American Evangelicalism or an old-fashioned type of patriotism. Living in that kind of ambiguity can produce a lot of anxiety. But discomfort isn’t a sign that we’re doing something wrong, it’s a sign that we’re on a journey. In the meantime, we may choose something like a star, to stay our minds on, and be staid.
Do you have a person, character, or ideal that you look up to? Or does that idea feel hopelessly old fashioned? What common stories or beliefs do you think we’ll coalesce around in the future? And is it Harry Potter? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments so we can learn from each other.
Have a friend who’s feeling living in the anxious in-between? Why not share this post with them?
BONUS MATERIALS:
Here’s the choral arrangement of Choose Something Like a Star that made me fall in love with the poem
I love Kelly Latimore’s modern icons. Here’s her Advent imagery.
Mmm so many good things here. I hope we can slow down enough to actually find our way in this threshold time.
(Also, LOVE Kelly latimore!)