Recently I stumbled upon articles stating adult nowadays are the least happiest. This is identified through the number of copies sold, and not to mention Hollywood adaptation, of Young Adult fiction. Dictionary-wise, the category of Young Adult is aimed at teenagers between the age 13-18 but
statistic shows an astonishing trend that almost 30% of the readers are in their 30s.
It is then believed, adults are not happy because they are constantly trying to forget their lives as an adult and revisit the younger part of their lives way back when a bottle of wine was innocence and tax was simply just a distant tragedy. Some even believed adults who read Young Adult fiction should be
ashamed to read literature that is meant for children.
In Young Adult literature - Paper Towns, Eleanor and Park, If I Stay to name a few successful works, offers the reader if less than an answer, a hope. That the good wins, and evil loses. That death isn't as bad as it sounds and love will always be there to save the day; most of the things that reality grabs away the moment one reaches adulthood.
That is why they are looking for an escape from the daily fights of money and social status in nine to five routine and commute war through Young Adult fiction. Like a time vessel, just as fast as the speed of Tube from Richmond to Battersea Park, adult do not need another reminder that life is hard and miserable.
In the beginning I thought the reason why generation Z are unhappy is because of social media. When people are constantly putting themselves as the centre of the universe and blindly accept what others have put out there - a picture of new place they have travelled, the flowers from their significant others as a remark of their long, happy and steady relationship, the new car, the band that they just saw, as a comparison between the other's highlight reels of a film to their behind the scenes where things are most likely to go down to the gutter.
I cannot entirely disagree and stand up from myself that I am not part of the fashion. To be perfectly frank, I despise most of the (romantic) mainstream Hollywood film with happy ending bullcrap, for the all wrong reasons as to my own disappointment in life that I lose the faith in love.
I realized that everything is in a cycle, chicken and egg, one thing lead to one another. It is maybe we all are craving to escape, we tend to find security in the fashion of posting the good bits of our lives. In fiction books and films. Because we all are so busy trying to separate between what is real and what is imagined, believing that reality is a cold-hearted bitch, then we lost touch to our innocence make-believe that things may go well. That, perhaps, just a tiny perhaps love can save the day.
I'd say it's okay to say once in a while to get in touch with the teenage, child-like side of us back when everything feels like Forever,
just before the bad wolf knocks again.
P.s that song at the top kills the worst of me.
A piece by
:
Fiya Muiz
