Christmas mornings are some of my most vivid memories as a child. I’d run downstairs, sort through large boxes wrapped in plastic to find one with my name scribbled on it. I’d rip through the colorful wrappings, open the box, spend hours on end removing the plastic-coated wires that held my toy in its container. After freeing my toy, sometimes a little horse, sometimes a doll, I’d swiftly dispose of everything else. For a day or two, sometimes a week, my toy and I were inseparable. I’d brand it with my colorful pens, get it filthy in the garden. Soon, however, the little plastic plaything would be placed in an obscure corner of my room, next to all the other toys of Christmas past, forgotten. Meanwhile, my easily distractible mind would find new plastic novelty to entertain itself.
Millennials are consumerists known for the little attachment they form to the many items that make up their lives. We see most things as disposable. From diapers to the cardboard juice cartons our moms put in our lunch boxes, we were breastfed on the beauty of short shelf life and Made In China toys. We never understood the importance of taking care of our belongings, like our parents did to their porcelain dolls. Holes in our clothes meant a trip to the Gap, and a meal not to our liking would end up in the trash.
If we millennials only treated our supermarket shelves and stores this way, we would already pose a considerable threat in ecological terms. However, we don’t only see consumer goods as expendable. We are the generation of disposable relationships. Of disposable jobs. Of disposable friends. Of disposable passions.
With social networking, we know faces, likes, pictures, and yet we know very few people. Yes, sure, we have a few life long friends. Yet we can rarely jot them into our busy agendas. We meet people in bars, discuss ideas that will never be concluded, add them on Facebook, and forget. The next week, we make new friends. And forget.
We discover new bands. It becomes our favorite band. Put them on loop for the next week. We tell everyone how amazing this band is. Come the following week, the music becomes old, uninteresting, replaceable. We search for the next band.
A job, to us, exists to make money. We work to buy the plastic that fills our living rooms. Monday mornings rarely connote to excitement, energy and positivity. A higher salary pops up in a different firm? We don’t hesitate to give in our notice and pack our things. My life, me, me, me.
What about our relationships?… People have become the shiny new toys at Christmas. We approach them, hook up. But we never get too close, too involved. I want you, as long as you don’t expect anything back from me. I want someone else. I want you back. We get married. We get bored. We divorce. Find someone new, a new plastic toy. In the end, are we meant to be so vapid? Or, more hopefully, are we meant to realize the error of our ways? We might not know what the future holds. But we’d better figure it out fast. Our lives are at stake.
