AMBITION is overrated. Heck, adulthood is overrated to me.

I say this with little cynicism whatsoever – it is more of a reflective statement than anything else and as I am in my mid-40s I believe I have some bragging rights to take such a stand.

As a so-called Generation X-er (someone who grew up in the 1990s as a teenager), my peers and I did not have the same cultural capital as youths do today.

For better or worse, the “slacker” attitude that permeated popular culture from the United States to our shores in the early 1990s – thanks to the grunge music explosion – was only matched by later “Cool Britannia”, which would carried on for the rest of the mid- to late 1990s as grunge became corporatised, incorporated and sanitised for broader consumption.

Many point to the suicide of Kurt Cobain in April 1994 as the moment when grunge died and the record industry scrambled to further find the next Nirvana, signing up a slew of bands that even have the most minute resemblance or even copycat sensibility.

I remember clearly reading the news of his death in the Malay Mail at a 7-11 outlet on an evening after school (I didn’t buy a copy, just picked it up and read it).

However, as a 17-year-old living outside of Petaling Jaya and Kuala Lumpur, I didn’t exactly have anyone to talk to about it until the next day at school.

While my experience of watching Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on TV3 in 1991 at the age of 14 left a big impression on me, I didn’t really get into Nirvana until their second album “In Utero”, which was a harsher and rawer record.

This slacker sensibility was present across youths of my age – if you weren’t into gangster rap or techno music – when you went down to Bukit Bintang on a Saturday to hang out at Lot 10.

You have to remember that this was before KLCC and the landmark of the time was the Maybank Tower after the allure of Dayabumi wore off in the 1990s.

How does this anecdote relate to my initial stand on goals or ambition? Well, it relates directly to the opposite experience of hanging out with your friends – going to school.

Maybe it’s just me or my school, but I never recalled a single event relating to what to do after high school or what professions are out there for you when you graduate.

Even the end of my schooling was a bit of an anti-climax – it just ended after you took your last SPM exam paper as you walked out of the hall.

Yes, there was a prom of sorts organised later – the best memory I have of that was seeing the spiky pink mohawk belonging to my classmate’s boyfriend as he entered the elevator, which initially seemed impossible – but I wasn’t big on dating girls, although I did have a crush or two and I did have a date for the prom. Still, it wasn’t my thing.

We didn’t have any pep talk by our teachers about the future or careers or even what to study next based on our strengths or weaknesses.

Unlike my classmates, I still went to school during the lead up to SPM – with empty classrooms and trashed tables and chairs – and it was hardly a conducive environment to study but I began to develop a taste for isolation, which I found more exciting than the company of my teen peers.

Now, as an educator and artist whose life revolves around youths and youth culture – or at least sharing a stage with youths and listening to their hope and fears through their banter at gigs or in the classroom – I can’t help feel that, while as a society we’ve worked our way to make opportunities for subsequent generations of youths, they are still as lost as I was in spite of all the gadgetry, technology, and most of all, the Internet.

I’m sure many will be disillusioned at discovering the “real” world, while some will grow wings, blossom, and take to the proverbial skies.

Yet kudos must be given to those who feel lost: because it is better, from my experience, to feel lost in the beginning rather than when you have prematurely settled down and still don’t really know who you are.

So, the moral of my rant is: get lost. Get gloriously lost, now. Lose yourself in what you enjoy and find meaning in, not just money or influence.

There’s too much emphasis on certainty and the supposed “loss” of certainty is the fuel for all the right-leaning and ultra-conservatism that pollutes our lives nowadays.

For it is only when you are lost that will you attempt to find yourself. – February 10, 2023.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.