What Is Edge?

I like Daria. Have I said that enough. I don't think I've said that enough. Apart one of the shows I watch when I don't know what I want to watch I also feel without that one show I'm not sure I would have made it through high school intact. There are shows that I've seen since about high school that have helped me put my life in perspective when I'm feeling low. And to be honest there are a few episodes like, "Write Where It Hurts", "Through a Lens Darkly", "The Misery Chick," and "Boxing Daria" that are always good and helping me step out of myself for introspection (prepare for it), but all the same that show had something that resonated me in the moment, at the time.

Ironically enough I think what that thing was was edge. Okay it takes some explaining why that's kind of odd. Daria did a whole episode, though it was a reoccurring theme of the show, poking fun at marketers trying to co-op youth culture specifically lamenting that the word edge was vague enough that it could mean anything.

To me Daria's edge was authenticity. It along with a lot of teen dramadies at the time spoke to a truth that I felt but couldn't articulate. The experience of being a kid, or rather a teenager isn't all sunshine and roses. You're young enough to lack a decent amount of control over your life and just old enough to appreciate how that lack of control affects you. Furthermore you often lack the life experience to figure out how to really cope with all of that. Performing the role of a sardonic Greek chorus is one way to deal with it. Hell, sometimes it's all you really have the power to do.

Daria had the courage to be indignant, not in the heroic sense of the paragon,  but rather indignant that her world didn't make sense to her and that she couldn't really do much about it.

That indignation, is a form of sincerity that requires a certain amount of self awareness and dare I say it vulnerability. Some writer had to find some of this stuff maddening and be okay with internally, privately and eventually publicly admitting it, which by the way is something I still struggle with, being comfortable enough to admit when I am angry and realizing the validity and eventually the causes of that emotion. On its own the condition of being angry, having an edge is okay.

On the other hand it isn't healthy to be angry and in the lie of satisfaction. Anger has a way of subtly effecting my thoughts and actions and as I get older I'm getting better at realizing when that's happening. When the why of me is, "because I'm mad." That doesn't mean that I have to stop being angry but realize and admit when said anger is starting to become motivation and when said motivation is affecting or even leading my decision making.

Doing something because I'm mad isn't always a bad thing but it's something I ought to know.