The other day I was driving around with my younger sister when a song started playing from her playlist. I had never heard this song before, but by the third time the chorus came around I knew exactly what the lyrics were. And as I listened to the rest of the song and heard it end it came to me, the reason I was able to pick up on the song so quickly was because it was so basic.
Sure it was an okay song, had a fun beat, and made me listen to the words; but it wasn’t anything that made me feel something. Listening to the song I could manage to detect a theme, a woman's body *rolls eyes*, that seemed to be the motivation for the songs entirety. But it wasn’t anything that made me think, or want to think. I didn’t want to listen to the song again because I didn’t have a reason to. Nothing about it made me crave to hear the words sung in tune, make my heart feel, or make my head wonder. But my sister continued to tell me that it was actually pretty popular, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out, but then I came up with a theory.
See the problem with today's younger generation is that it's not about how deep and moving something is, it's about how relatable it can be. Everyone wants to be part of the “scene” and feel like they’re being “spoken to”. Nobody wants to have to dig deeper into a piece of art or literature to find a bigger meaning. This generation wants the meaning to hit them in the face with nothing to discover or uncover. Because everything we do as a society in this day in age is skin deep. We’re all too focused on what number pops up on a scale rather than the amount of intelligence and emotions that make up a person. A real person. Someone with feelings and thoughts. We need to think deeper than what we can google search.
Even when we are trying to dig deeper into ourselves we're not trying to dig deeper in others. People don't know how to empathize anymore. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes is one of the best ways to discover them as person that's just as alive and here as you are. But yet again we as a generation don't want to do that, we can barely understand ourselves never mind someone else.
Another problem with thinking deeper is discovering deeper. People are afraid to be their true, honest self. It’s easier to pretend something isn’t there than to face it. It’s a scary thing to let the world know just who your true honest self is but it’s necessary in order to live a stronger and fuller life.
So just like that song, today’s society thinks skin deep. All the song talked about was the physicality of a woman, when a woman is much more than what you can see. Just like how a man is so much more than you can see. We as a society need to change our course of action when looking towards the future of the people we’re producing. As the years go on we’re getting shallower, less meaningful, and more superficial.
This article probably won’t get as many shares as some of my previous ones, but it doesn’t matter. If I can touch one person with this article, that means more to me than any amount of shares. Because I didn’t write this article to be relatable enough that it gets hundreds of shares, it’s about being real and getting to truer and deeper conclusion.
