This may be bluffing, but I think that one of the dowdiest things about being young is the vague pressure you feel to be constantly subversive, to sneer at oldster evasions, to shun compromise, to seek the hard way out, etc., when really you know that idealism is worse than useless without example, and that you're no better. The teenager can normally detach his own behaviour from his views on the behaviour of others; but I had no moral energy left.