Being a 21-year-old college student in New Jersey and living during a time where technology and social media are rapidly increasing has truly showed a different side of the millennial generation. Today our generation is obsessed with Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Snapchat, and sharing with the world their thoughts and pictures. In addition to sharing, it is also about how many likes someone can get or how many favorites or retweets someone can get. Instead of focusing on what is reality, our generation would rather focus on virtual reality. Reality is learning what is most important in life, the basic virtues of memories and happiness.
The millennial generation lacks the importance of what truly matters in life and will soon see all of these years flash before their eyes. However, one important person in my life has shown me what’s important in life and what isn’t for twenty years, my grandfather. Hearing about life and asking for advice from someone who has experienced life in similar ways and different ways for 87 years of life gave me a different outlook on life. Whenever I think of my grandfather the first thing that pops into my head is an italian quote he would repeat non stop, “when you die you ain’t got nothing!” Interpreting this in my own way opens my eyes to realize that all of these materialistic items mean nothing at the end of the day, because the experiences and memories created are what people remember. Wouldn’t you rather remember the last time you and your best friend or family went on an adventure or vacation then a present you received from a relative on your birthday? I think it is time my generation put down their phones and go for a hike with their best friend, plan a trip with a group of friends, go out to dinner with their parents or anything that involves being face to face. At the end of the day you can sit around a table and laugh at all the memories you have with your friends and family, which will be with you for a lifetime.
Memories are a sacred part of life and so is finding out what truly makes you happy in life. Coming from an italian family it is tradition in my family to eat Sunday dinner together as a family and my grandfather would always say, “what is better than sitting around the table with your family, what else do you need?” It amazed me that something so simple as being with his family made my grandfather the happiest person in the world, but in his time he didn’t grow up with all of these luxuries my generation has access to now. Families nowadays eat dinner in front of a TV, or sit on their phones the whole time, or don’t even eat in the same room. Wouldn’t it be nice to sit down with your family and laugh and talk about the day you had? My generation takes a lot of things in their life for granted and before they know it it’s gone. There is no satisfaction of working towards something because everything is easily accessible to us nowadays where there is barely any work needed.
Motivation, inspiration, and dedication is all it takes to achieve something that makes you happy in this life. What is stopping the millennial generation from reaching those goals? Nothing comes easy in the world we live in and everything we want takes hard work so that we can appreciate it later on and actually say to ourselves, “I did it.” Find something that makes you happiest the person in the world no matter what obstacles come at you, because at the end of the day what makes you happy is going to mean more to you then an instagram picture from one of your classmates or colleagues. Whether that happiness be small or little, what matters is how it makes you feel and how it makes you look at life. Stay humble, grounded, and work hard in this crazy thing called life.
