Twenty or thirty years ago, nobody would have believed that our nation would genuinely consider selecting a woman to become our next President of the United States of America. For us millennials, however, the thought of a woman candidate not being taken as seriously or not being considered for the position as equally as a male candidate just doesn't make sense. Millennials have grown up in an era where anything is possible, and every day we begin to accept new ideas and concepts. I guess you could say that we take these monumental moments, such as a woman being one of our choices in the Presidential election, for granted. We've had it too good. We need to take a step back and realize that we have a front row seat to history in the making. We are witnessing amazing things that our parents and grandparents couldn't have dreamed of occurring when they were our age.
Millennials live in a world where gay rights should be seen as human rights, where a woman should be treated as equally as a man or where the color of someone's skin should not determine how they are treated by others or their opportunities in life.
That's the world that millennials live in. A world of the possibility of true equality. We can practically taste it, and we certainly expect it!
Unfortunately, that's not the world that has always existed. It's been a long journey for gay rights, civil rights, women's rights and religious rights. A loooooong journey. Millennials have not been there for the majority of the journey and perhaps that’s why we sometimes take the progress that has been made for granted. Sometimes we don't think that we've come that far. We don't understand why all people, regardless of race, gender or sexuality, aren't treated equally. We expect people to be treated equally because we (me, you, him and her) are ALL people. We are all the same. What makes me better than you or you better than me? Definitely not our race, gender or sexuality... that's for sure. If anything, those are the things that should matter the least.
So, it seems that because we haven't reached total equality, we tend to take the progress that society has made for granted. Yes, we read about it in the history books and online, but millennials haven't actually lived through the Women's Suffrage Movement or the Civil Rights Movement like our parents or grandparents did. I guess because we didn't live through it, we really can't grasp how much progress has actually been made in society.
We need to take a step back.
This nation has come SO far from the 1900s. We have a woman running for President, a woman who may actually win! That's incredible. Two people of the same sex can walk down the street without having others harass them, and in nearly every state they can even become legally married. For the past eight years, we have had the first black President occupying the White House. That's amazing if you compare this to life during the 1900s for woman, gay people and people of color. SO much has changed for the better.
But.. there are still problems with gender, race and sexual equality today.
Women are still paid less than men in the work force. People are still treated differently and harshly and often cruelly by others if they are gay, lesbian, trans, etcetera. People of color are often treated unfairly in the justice system. Those are all still MAJOR problems. I'm not saying we don't have a ways to go before equality truly exists in all facets of life. We do.
But... stop and take a step back and just look at how far we have come.
Don't always focus on what's left to do. Think of the glass as half full not half empty!
Celebrate how far we have come. Let it motivate you to progress more. Appreciate and understand how much better and more fair life is now for so many types of people than it was twenty or thirty years ago. We are living during such a beautiful period of life where so many issues have been dealt with and we are able to move on to the next ones. We are living in a time where almost any thought can become a reality.
It is possible to fix injustices in this world, and I believe that one day we will. But for now let's just take a second to be proud of how far we have come.
