The You in Young American
The great irony of America's twenty-somethings is they despise being told what to do, but they'll go out of their way to be told who they are. If they were to excavate the ancient ruins of sites like Greece or Mexico, they wouldn't listen to the counsel and direction of those who know how to excavate, but they would seek out someone who's willing to tell them what the ruins look like based on popular culture. Identity is like the ruins, though, in that you have to work and remove what's loose and unnecessary to reveal what is structure and what is sediment. And, like the erosion of nature, the erosion of life will either further bury your identity or will slowly destroy what little has been crudely exposed. I was once told by a close friend that, "Identity is the fluid result of what you want and what you'll do to get [what you want]." If that is true, then the aforementioned youth are surrendering their actual identity by failing to want and
