Hey you.
I thought I'd write to you today to give you a welcome break from filling out applications, managing your exhausting part-time job(s) or internship(s), college classes, wearily watching the increasingly competitive job market and/or the world collapse in on itself, and having a stare-off at the ceiling in the hopes that it will tell you what to do with your life. Heaven knows you need this break. Deserve it, even. Despite what a lot of people may say, that you are just “procrastinating” and “confused,” I say otherwise, and I assure you, you need this break.
I’m also writing to you because, although I may be younger than most of you, I can see what we as millennials are going through and are about to go through. We’re working extra, extra, extra hard to keep up — with others, with our parents’ expectations, with a habitable standard of living, with a comfortable, stable income; with a lot of things, really. And all the while, we’re being fed information and advice that, while in theory sounds lovely and motivational, could never apply to the real world we’re in right now. Advice like, “follow your dreams, and you won’t work a day in your life,” or “be kind, generous and caring to everyone.” Advice that, a lot of the time, it seems, is impossible to follow.
Growing up as a millennial also has the added pressure of being the target of older generations to pick on. We’re “lazy,” “incompetent” and “spoiled rotten.” Our involvement in politics is mocked, and our commiseration over how difficult it is to secure even an entry-level job (that requires three to four years of experience) is labelled as “exaggerated” and “pointless.” Our faults are pointed out and criticized in detail, and what we consider achievements are under-appreciated.
Despite all of this, and the recurring feeling of simply wanting to give it all up to go herd sheep in the Alps, my pre-college, motivated, untouched-by-the-real-world self is here to tell you not to. I, like several of my peers, have big dreams. Bigger dreams than when I was six years old. I want to perform on stages, and at the same time go to Mars. I want to write books and make music and art and travel — not only to big cities but to the small towns and villages across the world that make the place what it really is. However, I also know that these dreams will be subjected to heavy modification over the next few years, what with the increasing competition to simply survive and find a job- one of the most basic things we are taught while we were children about our future. “Following my dreams” will become “following the quickest path to success while trampling hordes of my friends and peers traveling it,” and most of the time, the two don’t align. But, this will not stop me from continuing to dream big and have an over-the-top, wild imagination, and it should not stop you either.
We pre-college kids admire you guys more than you think — I admire your perseverance and your strength in getting this far on your own, in pulling through and trying to stay positive the whole time. I look up to a lot of you because you’re tackling this crazy, difficult world head-on, and if that isn’t Herculean I don’t know what is. But please, just because the older generations want you to “buckle down” and “work harder,” don’t lose your imaginations or your dreams. I’m fairly sure that the very existence of those dreams, even if they were different before, is what got you to where you are now, and I’m confident that they will take you much farther. The struggles you’re going through right now are just one obstacle, like the monkey bars on the playground. Get past them, and then you’ll be hailed for your achievements. Then, you can finally go chasing those wild scenarios you dreamed up as a kid, unmodified and in their purest and most original form.
I wish you good luck, our role-models. Don’t give up and don’t stop dreaming, because if you don’t dream for yourself, then who will?
