When you were 21

recent conversations with Gen Z, existential alienation, and going delulu

What did the world feel like when you were 21? What did you—the inside world of you—feel like when you were 21?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot the last couple of weeks for a bunch of reasons. First, as you may have heard, the nation elected a president who is profoundly immature in all the wrong ways (there are really, really wonderful ways to be immature). But also, I got to record a podcast episode with a vulnerable, philosophical 21-year-old (who happens to be my co-host, Carvell Wallace’s, son). You can listen to that here, and boy is Ezra worth listening to.

Among many powerful things, Ezra said: “I’ve extrapolated my powerlessness over the world to powerlessness over my own life.”

I remember feeling some of this. When I was 21, or thereabouts, George Bush got elected and I remember waking up in my boyfriend’s bed hungover and disbelieving the day after. I forced my friends to go to the protest march against the Iraq War and President Bush called it a “focus group.” I was horrified by the contrast between my experience, which had been raucous and visceral and made me feel like I had some agency, and the media and political conclusion, which was that it didn’t mean shit. My book, Do It Anyway, was born out of that contrast and I’m still very proud of where it led me, which, in short was: staying human within broken systems is, in and of itself, an aspiration worth having.

At 21, I had a real commitment to documentary photography. Now I look at these and feel like I can feel myself sense-making and wayfinding via beauty.

But, after talking to Ezra and other Gen Z-ers lately, I fear that they’re not wrong that the systems these days are so broken it’s hard to even see a way of staying human inside of them. One would have to be downright delusional to think that there is any way at all of living amidst late stage capitalism and not being complicit in others’ suffering (eg. the laptop I write this on was probably built by someone making far below a living wage and the materials inside of it were probably extracted in such a way that hurt the planet’s and people’s health). In fact, I can’t stop thinking about one of the things Ezra told me that didn’t make it into the final episode: Gen Z has a slang word—delulu—which is often used to describe someone who is delusional about their connection to celebrity, but can also just mean someone who thinks their willpower is any match for the monstrosity of the world as it really is. Your delulu, in other words, if you think you have real power in a world where power has become so totally corrupted. When I asked him about “the good life, and this did make it in, he immediately called bullshit. He said that this is why his generation is always doomscrolling and vaping: “The best you can do is fake it. The best you can do it laugh at it.”

I so long not to come off like a delulu elder pointing out all the silver linings. On the other hand, I am very scared of a world where young people don’t see themselves, their friends, their real life community, as as a source of salvation and beauty. When I was 21, I did think the world was going to shit in certain ways, but I also believed so deeply in the weird genius of my friends. They were making blogs and making jokes and making art and making books and making love and making making making, the world as we wanted it to be, not the world as it was according to The New York Times or President George W. Bush.

And I know so many in Gen Z are doing this. The kids are making shit, but I’m not sure they’re really all that alright. I know so many of them believe in the weird genius of their friends, but there’s something about the way in which social media has collided with the distrust of just about every single institution that we interact with (healthcare, public education, media, politics) that makes it a very hard time to see, value, commit to small collectives.

More meaning-making and wayfinding.

I don’t mean group texts (although they’re great). I don’t mean partying together (although that’s great, too). I mean grounding, vulnerable, lasting friendship where you are accountable to one another’s thriving, growth, creativity, and care. I mean love of your people—the kind of attentional investment that has you showing up for one another, spending real time with one another, helping one another hear your deepest dreams for your lives and then get after them in small, ritualistic ways no matter what the gatekeepers say or the presidents lie about next.

By the end of my conversation with Ezra, I felt like he got there. He seemed to reconnect with his own knowing that his friendships, his kindness, his creativity were the ground on which he could faithfully stand. The world has 9,999,999 ways to disappoint you, to alienate you, to make you feel powerless and tired. But your friends have ten million ways to do the opposite—to make you dance and laugh and cry and hike and draw and feel less alone.

In just the last two weeks, as the abstract nation has made me feel deeply alienated, my real community have helped me celebrate the owl perched in the branch at sunrise, written me a card about how intentional my mothering has been these last 11 years, given me string cheese when I was hungry, and written a poem that moved me to tears. It’s all real—the depravity and the life-affirmation, the distrust and the ride-or-die-ness, the shallowness and the deepness. Don’t let the Internet and all its tentacles (headlines, polls, social media, streaming, algorithms etc.) pull you out of your real, beautiful life and make you feel homeless. You are home among your people and your dreams, no matter what the “state of the world.” And the only way I know to make the “state of the world” less heinous is to trust what deserves trust, to ground on solid, relational ground, to start from there and then move outward.

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Are you Gen Z? Tell us all the things. How are you feeling? What did I get wrong?

And maybe send this along to some badass young people in your life that are struggling and inspire you with their moral imagination and their refusal to settle for broken systems, and tell them how cool you think they are?