How many times have you heard phrases like, "Your generation is so entitled," or "You don't know what hard work is?" If you're between the ages 16 and 22 I'm sure you've heard this more than a couple hundred times. Older generations judge us constantly, simply for having a different reality then they did. Now don't get me wrong, we do have it pretty nice sometimes. We do have incredible technology, great opportunities and most of us weren't sent to work at the age of 12. However, we are constantly told that we have no morals, don't understand the "real world" and take far too many pictures on our iPhones. This is where they are wrong.
We have our own morals, that is why we speak out against what is wrong with the world; it is why 3 out of 4 millennials support same sex marriage. It is why we protest what is wrong with university policies or have built some of the largest student run philanthropies in the world. We are not foolish. We are not careless. Life has stepped in, in the most harsh of ways. We watched with fresh eyes as our bodies grew, and the world did too. Yes, we take too many pictures and text too many people, but we are not interacting in all the wrong ways. The world is changing around us, and we adapt. We crave to capture our happiest moments and try to stay in touch with those we love. Maybe we are naive for opening our hearts to anyone who will say hello. Maybe we are foolish for refusing to accept the “real world.” Maybe we love far too deeply. But we are not ignorant. We are free.
Test scores and GPAs have become our life. We have been taught that memorization determines intelligence, and school before mental health. We have written down our thoughts on blogs and online journals, because adults call us weak. We grow in our own ways, instead of molding into what most want us to be. Some of you give us a chance, but a lot of you turn us down. We were taught to respect our elders, but how can we do that without being given the same courtesy. Does your age give you a right to judge what you did not experience for yourself?
We do not judge you. We only wish you had eyes like ours. We only ask that you open your hearts and recognize that we do not always have the answers. They were not taught to us. We know the countless wars and pythagorean theorems, but we do not always quite know ourselves. You forget we do not have our lives yet figured out, but everyone suddenly expects us to. We run on few hours of sleep and spit out vocabulary like Bible verses. We are the generation that is saying, “Enough is enough.” We are the body-positive, self-love, accept-everyone-no matter-ethnicity-or-sexual-orientation generation. We are passionate and alive, we simply want the world to see what we see. We want to change the world.
