You can't always get what you want

From MTV's "The Real World" all the way to the presumably educated and intellectual readership of Salon, it seems that self-pity and a pervasive, delusional narcissism have more to do with the failure of love in our time than irony or any other hip, po-mo buzzword Salon's editors might want to slap on it. I'm tired of being identified with self-appointed representatives of "my generation" (as if generational identity has any substantive meaning at all in the advertising age) who so witlessly yield to the notion that life and love are so damned hard in the good old USA. It must be the nature of being spoiled to take enormous privilege and good fortune for granted.

There are places in the world where the youth are too busy resisting genocide, epidemic AIDS, famine, drought and indenture to Western power to worry about defining "the meaning of youth." We envy the fleeting idealism of the '60s generation -- essentially, a retread of gripes that precede the 20th century: people aren't getting enough good sex, men suck, we hate our parents, we love but envy our parents. The Rolling Stones made a pretty simple and telling analysis of this predicament back in those stupid 1970s: "You can't always get what you want."

Nevertheless, these letters have unintentionally explained for all time what it means to be young, at least in America. As much as anything else, youth is now and has always been defined by myopia. Despite our status as citizens of a nation of over 270 million people, we are all sure that our needs and desires are desperately important. We are all convinced that no one (except for that special someone or our favorite pet) truly understands us. We are all certain that, damn it, if we were running the world, there'd be no war, pot would be legal, everyone would be happy, and no children would suffer. We all believe down deep that we lead lives of destiny. Far too many of us genuinely believe we will one day be a world-class, superfamous important person and then everyone will love us.

Maybe love escapes so many of us because we have trained ourselves to fear and avoid what it requires: sacrifice, humility, compromise, pragmatism and, most of all, risk. Maybe part of finding love is learning how to stop being afraid -- of what we're missing or what we're getting into -- or, at least, to live with those fears because they are preferable to the alternative. Maybe the fairy-tale image of love we've inherited from watching too many movies and sitcoms is like the airbrushed, starving fashion model who not only confronts us with our imperfection but suggests to us that the mythic ideal is attainable. But love, I think, comes only when we are ready to yield the selfhood and a large measure of the freedom we've been trained to hold so dearly to another. I don't consider that challenge to be generational -- it's human.

-- Edward Tarkington (29)

Love forever

As a 35-year-old married woman I found the responses in "Love in the Age of Irony" to be a sad indicator of where the generation was heading. That is, until it occurred to me that they can't be representative of their generation at all.

I work at a university in smallish town, and I can't begin to count how many of the students I meet and work with who are dating, in significant relationships, engaged or already married. Sure, there are some who don't seem to date at all, preferring to "hook up" and post to electronic boards complaining that nobody understands them. They often belong to the same groups who spend most of their free time playing video games and/or drinking.

Protesting that irony has ruined romance is just another excuse for those who have always found relationships too frightening or challenging. Here's some advice from someone who knows what is possible. Turn off your PlayStation, pick up a copy of the poetry of Pablo Neruda, skip the bar and head to the cafe instead. Amour pour toujours!

-- Jacqui Cain

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