You don’t have to look very far for a news story, article or even an elder in real life to say that you, young millennials are done goofed. Whether we’re destroying the sanctity of marriage, too emotional, too sensitive, not being active in our society enough, or being too active in the wrong ways, Millennials are totally failing at this whole adult business.
Are we, though?
For one thing, Millennials haven’t even been adults that long. Most researchers define Millennials as the current demographic of late teenagers and young adults throughout their 20s. Millennials get a lot of criticism for not having it all together, but historically as young adults, there have been very few windows of time when it was easy to get it together.
The Lost Generation or the demographic that lived through WWI were pretty busy trying to keep the world from breaking apart in extreme nationalism when they were young adults. The Interbellum Generation saw the greatest boom in America that the economy had ever known and then faced the Great Depression. Then came the Greatest Generation, who did the impossible in WWII. Then we get to the Baby Boomers. They went to space and Vietnam. Now we are at Generation X, and finally, Millennials. As the famed vlogger, scientist and businessman Hank Green point out, Millennials didn’t even choose the name, but we have it, and it comes with lots of criticism.
The question is, now what do we do with it?
One thing that all of the critics and concerned theorists are missing when they look at Millennials -- and even Generation X — is that our story is not yet over. They say we are headed on a path of destruction and nothing that was old and good will ever survive — I’m not saying that we have everything figured out. Millennials have and will continue to have issues that shape the world, but it is yet to be seen if that will be positive or negative.
Each generation before us has had their moment in time, and today Millennials are about to get ours. It is up to us to make it something grand. There are always notable shifts in prevailing attitudes, beliefs and ideas in each generation. The very fact that we are different generations should be an indicator that we are not going to do things the same way, or see the world with the same view, and that is very simply because it is not the same. The world has changed so much from generation to generation that we have been constantly on the cusp of new. I think in our world of massive resources and fledgling disciplines that study the way we live our lives, people have forgotten the saying, that the only thing constant is change. Now Millennials are beginning to change the world -- whether you like it or not.
So maybe you have heaps of student debt, or maybe finding that entry level job is taking longer than you thought, don’t give up. We are at the forefront of history, we can’t fit into the neat little boxes of the people who came before us. We have to embrace that as all generations are, we are unique. We are going to make our way in life, perhaps like no one has before us, and since this is history we’re talking about, so long as we keep trying with the knowledge we will eventually get there -- we have all the time in the world.
