Disorientation

The last few days I have only an acceleration of a sensation of being adrift in time, in some liminal place, in an unfamiliar world. The world does not seem to make sense, I want to say. But what does such a statement mean. Did the world ever "make sense"? I can't claim that it ever did, yet somehow it has always made sense enough to navigate with a rational expectation of outcomes based on one's choices and behaviors. Lately I feel less of that. But what do I know. I'm barely following the news lately, not because I'm repulsed by events, but because it only adds to my disorientation.

If it was just me, I'd just assume I was going mad, but I know that many other people are feeling the same way. There is a sense of dread floating around, not just about the present moment, but about people's lives, especially among the young. This last part to me is the real kicker---that so many young people have expressed a feeling of hopelessness about their lives. As a young person, I never felt hopeless about my life, even in the midst of severe emotional pain. I always felt like the future would be better somehow, and that my problems were transitory. The world would go on, and I would find my place in it. I never felt anything like the way these young folk talk about their lives. Every aspect of life that marks the transition to adulthood feels broken---education, courtship, marriage, careers, housing. 

Something is clearly way off. Everyone feels it in some way, I think. It feels as if so many things that used to tie us to the old world, which for all its faults felt relatively stable and predictable in the big picture, have been taken away that none of us can mentally absorb what is taking place and where we are going.