Emo is one of the newer words in my vocabulary. When it first came out and my students started flaunting the word here and there, I asked them what it was. None of them could give me a satisfactory answer. I got answers that ranged from musical genres to artistic designs to hairstyles. I was worried that the gap between generation Y and X was getting too wide to bridge. (I belong to the latter.) So I asked one of my friends and she told me that emo was simply gen Y’s version of gen X’s angst. Ahh. Emo. Angst. Issues. No generation is complete without its own version. The fly in the ointment, the knot on the rope, the glitch in the matrix.
Who doesn’t have issues? Even the dead have issues I should think. I don’t think we’d ever be truly human without our issues. Broken families, broken hearts, unfulfilled needs, unvoiced sentiments, repressed emotions. We all have our crosses to bear. And yet it seems that some have more issues than others. And some are more successful at overcoming them than others. People who have learned to transcend their little dramas and become better human beings. The question, then, isn’t who has issues but who has learned to become happy despite his issues. What makes one person a Hamlet and another a Harry Potter? Both dealt with death, murder even. Both had to struggle with identity and love and destiny in some form or another in their young years. However, Hamlet was a tragic figure who drove himself to madness, despair and eventually death. And as for Harry, well, we all know how Harry turned out.
Okay, even if the metaphor is a little bit trite, we have to admit that it is a question that every self-help guru and every celebrity psychiatrist is attempting to answer. And have answered. Except that if we read all the self-help books out there, we would most likely become a tight knot of human drama and emotions just waiting to explode. One doctor says let go. The other says hold everything close to your heart. One says look to the past. The other says, remain in the present and the other says keep your eye on the future. One says the answer is having a great diet. The other says it is a great exercise regimen. And another simply says, it’s all in your DNA so why bother.
So, I suppose now would be a good time to propose my highly opinionated, unqualified suggestion of what makes one better at dealing with his issues and therefore happier in this life. Yes, that should come in right about now. Except I don’t have one. I don’t have an answer. I’m still trying to figure it out. Some days I think I get it and other days, well, other days just come and go and I am nowhere nearer to the answer than when I started. I don’t think anybody knows for certain either. Not anybody on this earth at least. I think we’re all at different stages getting there in one way or another. Maybe when we get to heaven it’ll be crystal clear. But before then, we must all make our way in this earth. Learn little by little as we go along, adopt and discard insights as we see fit, shape and reshape our character as we grow older, allow ourselves some emo-time every once in a while. Because this is what life is. This is what we do. This is who we are. And to deny our issues and to repress our angst and to trivialize our emo-moments is to renounce the very core of our personhood.