The Youth of Privileged Emotions

The head spinning phenomenon when someone asks you a question you don't know the answer to that a lot of other people have asked you before? Well, that's what's been lately. Educated people who share Rumi quotes have been doing that more than the ones who don't even know who Rumi is. I find it fascinating how people so confidently post inspirational quotes and think that their lives are entitled to living according to it, and when it comes to conversing about the confusion of the lost lives the youth of privileged emotions* are living nowadays, they forget that they had posted that quote on Instagram they are ignoring in this conversation and (un)knowingly spreading the hurt they felt at that moment they hit share.


This head spinning is ok. We are fine as we are. And we don't need the world to tell us what to do and how to feel. Social media gets us. Our misery can be shared by the lit screens in our hands. Our hands are being held by electrons, sent to us by hands of the same people who share our feelings in this quick sand of joblessness and bad grades.

We'll be ok, right? The electrons seem to think so.

I guess only time will tell. Till then, lets share quotes and ignore the lessons they teach cuz we just want to be cool and gain followers.

*The Youth of Privileged Emotions: -

We are the kids who were taught all our lives that we are better than everyone else, because we can solve the equations faster than the boy in the class who likes to play the guitar instead of going to the academy for his intermediate exam preps. And when the same boy gets more marks than us, we throw tantrums.

We are the kids who drove around in cars with their drivers, getting high, when the parents were at a wedding to which they only went to show off the new jewelry our mother got. We sneaked, smoked and screamed as our drivers waited to go to their homes and be able to share a meal with their own kids. But we eat gourmet burgers as we give a couple of hundred rupees to our drivers so they can go a dhaba for a meal instead of going home.

We are the kids who never knew that when we'd be at a national university instead of the Ivy League we always dreamed about and our parents never stopped us from dreaming, we'd be surrounded by the same type of vindictive assholes who would not only leg pull, but pull down our underwear to show who is better. We were supposed to be better. Not because we can afford branded football jerseys and go on vacations to places so obscure our rivals cannot even pronounce the names, but because we were raised with lipstick stains on our cheeks reminding us that we don't need to work.

We are the kids who don't work. Our beds are automatically made when we come back from schools. Our dinner tables are always set. While we go to clubs, playing tennis and making fun of kids with middle class outfits, our houses will be clean. The marble will never be stained with out sweat. We don't sweat. We have centrally air conditioned homes. Our freon emissions are a symbol of "we don't give a fuck about anybody else."

So when we graduate and don't get jobs, we'll feel entitled to acting as if we're lost in love. We were lost in love. And then we lost love. But our parents still kiss us. There's fuel in the cars, and there's food on the table. Yet we're empty. Our emptiness only hitting us now as we discover Rumi and his profoundness, as we discover The Alchemist and it's magic. Our despair, our misery, is not in the tears we don't cry, but in the loss of having to do. The loss of having to move. The loss of having to give. The loss of stopping the taking. The loss of consumption of the body.

So we revel in the ability to feel so lonely, the ability to feel like the world is a void where we're not needed. We find pleasure in knowing we can be sad, that we can lose when we've always won. And misery becomes company because do we really need a job our parents are pushing us to get? TED talks make us feel better, acting as tissue papers to wipe our tears until we've binged on so much motivation, our body cannot take it. So we go to sleep instead.