Honestly, the everyday grind of life is really pretty boring. Most people live very unfulfilling lives, more so with the millennial generation. I think this is a product of technology, and the overload of information (good and bad) that comes with it.

Why?

Because social media is one giant façade. All you are going to see are the highlights of everyone’s lives. Only the biggest and brightest moments are captured. When you combine each person posting only their highlights, to an outside viewer it can definitely seem that everyone is living an exciting and happy life while yours may not be. Nobody (okay maybe somebody) is going to post the dark thoughts and negative times they go through for everyone to see. The harsher reality though, is that most people don’t even actually want to see the darker side of life. They don’t want to acknowledge it or know it even exists. Ignorance is truly bliss for many people.

Seeing all of the social media highlights can make an excluded party feel very alone. This can lead to idealization. Idealization leads to dreaming. But the problem is that when you’re dreaming of “highlights” (extravagant vacations, career achievements, familial success) is that you yourself lose your perspective. You become jaded. You can start to stress about the fact that it seems like everyone your age is doing something with their lives, while you seem to make no progress.

It really seems like I’m bashing social media, I know. Social media can create so much anxiety – that’s why I’m not a fan. But social media actually genuinely isn’t even a bad thing. It allows you to keep touch and somewhat in the know in the lives of people you used to know.

But here is my counter-question to that – if you really cared about someone (and I absolutely understand the time and mental demands of everyday life) you would contact them in a more direct, personal method. Like a phone call. Or going to lunch. Social media eradicates all the nitty-gritty of relationships, and you get to dive straight into the information without the true social aspect of it. It’s like eating just the center of a cinnamon roll: you get all the delicious, sticky heart of the bun (it’s always the best, don’t lie) but you didn’t get to fully enjoy the experience of the cinnamon roll, because you cut straight to the point. You needed instant gratification. That’s another indicator of millennials, we always want what we want right now. And we think that way because technology has allowed us to get exactly what we want, when we want, where we want, and how we want. It’s the year 2016, and you can literally use your phone to order and pay for an entire order of food to be delivered straight to you without doing a thing. Isn’t that just nuts if you really think about it? Just ten years ago you had to get your ass off the couch and out of the house to actually go outside and in some fashion interact with society. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with lazy. When you’re not working you deserve to be lazy, so it’s actually really nice to see technology adapting to the new wave of life (millennials).

There are two key points I’m trying to address here. The easier one to explain is that people (much more prevalent in youth) simply don’t take the time to enjoy things. And I am also guilty of this, and I think that this is something that is very easy to fall into. Who wants to work ridiculously hard to make a meager pay that doesn’t cover all of our desires? I think my generation (and it’s getting even worse for younger generations to come) are incredibly spoiled and entitled. And in a sense, it’s really not even their fault. When you’re born into a certain way of life, and then raised that way, that’s just how you become. Ultimately, you ARE a product of your environment and genetics.

The reason why this is so problematic is because it returns us to the notion of instant gratification. When we know what we want, we want it right now. We are impatient. But here’s my question: what (legal) reward from a single set of actions in a short time frame are really worth it? Take for example online shopping. You really want something, so you impulsively purchase it. You’re excited when you buy it, maybe a little after, and then there’s the short-lasting excitement when it arrives. Did you notice that all of that time of “excitement” could be squished into less than ten minutes, when it could take as long as three to four days for the item you bought to come? What I think I’m trying to say is that anything worth having is worth waiting for. That’s a cliché, but seriously impactful benefits don’t come quick. Let us take for example, going to the gym. You don’t get results after one day. Or two. Or a week. It can take months, even years to show results (depending upon how picky you are with your body). But body image is a huge point of contention with many people, and with such a serious issue a remedy could greatly improve overall wellbeing. Serious effects take time. Ultimately I think the future generations need to learn a lot more patience. It’s a virtue, and it will make your live so much easier since it’s a stress-management tool as it makes you more resistant. And we all know that one of the biggest thing’s everyone could use improvement with is stress management. And I wish I could tell you that there’s a simple fix. But to be honest, it isn’t one size fits all. Not every patience-building technique will work for everyone. I think at the bare minimum it would help if everyone were more mindful of the fact that life is a marathon, not a sprint. Life is short, but not in the frame of reference of your life. 70 years may be short but that’s your life. Give or take 30 years. That isn’t going to happen overnight, so respectively it doesn’t make sense for everything else to as well.

And now for my last point, and ultimately the darker one. I’ve really come to believe, that on a very generalized level, people don’t genuinely give a flying f*ck about each other. And that is both a good and bad thing.

Here’s why it’s good. Your life is about you. The world most certainly does NOT revolve around you, or anyone else not named the Sun. But everyone has their own life that nobody else is living and that only they are in charge of. People will come and go throughout your life, that is just the normal process of life. Your friends will grow up and move away and pursue careers and make family. Honestly real “adult” life is incredibly lonely, especially if you’re single, because it’s only you that does every action you do everyday. So in a sense it is very helpful to not have the distractions of needing to care for other people’s needs, especially when their presence in life is very short-lived, and ultimately they’re out for their own best needs also. This obviously becomes different when family comes into play, as then other’s needs become as or more important than your own. But these are people that don’t have finite roles in your life. They are supposed to, in some capacity, stick around forever.

And here’s why it’s bad. While everyone is in charge of and living their own, unique version of life, they are also at the same time being ruled by their own personal sets of beliefs and morals based upon their genetics and environment of upbringing. What that means essentially, is that everyone is doing what they think is right in respect to their own experience and desires. That can create a lot of conflict, because it is rare for there to be legitimately aligned goals between people. There are aligned goals that are illegitimate in which people will work together to achieve a common goal, whilst also using that to pursue their own personal agenda. That’s called ulterior motive. What this creates is another really ugly façade. It’s the illusion that we’re actually working together in harmony, building a false sense of community. This self-centered behavior can lead to the realm of crime. If someone is looking out for their own best interest that can absolutely come at the expense of someone else for other people. And that isn’t fair, but I’ve come to accept life isn’t fair. The worst part of this all is that it further drives home the idea that life really is lonely. You ever heard of the concept of feeling alone in a crowd full of people? That’s why. People are present, but not involved.

I’m not saying all millennials are like this at all. It just have become more prevalent in my experience with younger people due to the increased exposure of this age. My point is rather I want people to be more self-aware of their own desires and the motives behind them. Whether we know it or not we probably engage in self-centered behavior on a daily basis. I do too. It’s just a natural thing for humans to engage in. I think the key takeaway is to just be more mindful. There are 7 billion other humans driving their own life on the planet, what are the odds life is all about you? And what about other forms of life: sea-life, plants, and bacteria? You do the math.