Today’s generation is facing a crisis, a crisis of significance.

We’re young, bright-eyed idealists. We like to say that we don’t do “easy.” We aren’t daunted by the fact that we’ll have to scrap by living in conditions worse than our college dorms while interning with some large institution that really could afford to pay us in dollars, but instead chooses the increasingly dubious currency of “experience.” Our goals, they’re not just about influence or power, not really about impressing others…and God knows they’re certainly not about money. Rather it’s a special amalgamation of all these.

It’s the idea that within an ever-growing sea of educated and talented young people, I am unique. I matter.

I matter not only to others, but far more importantly; I matter to myself.

Many factors have converged on this generation to bring about an extreme disregard for anything that doesn’t further our goal of significance. Our parents and grandparents struggled for decades to progressively raise their living standards. Now we’re at a point so comfortable that while of course we want it to improve, we’re fine with the status quo for now. We think that later on in life, when we settle down and have 3 kids, that’s when we’ll raise our standard of living. It’ll be easy. I mean, it isn’t too bad now anyway.

We grow up knowing that while life isn’t easy, neither is it financially very hard. We view everything as an American right, whether it’s a vehicle or higher education or cheap energy. We’ve patiently listened to our grandparents telling us how they didn’t grow up with all of this. How they barely had enough money to put food on the table. But we see what they have now, comfort. Extra comfort even. The kind of extra comfort that buys you leisurely cruises in the Caribbean and walking tours of English castles. Sure, they’re not doing those every weekend, but it seems like they’re having sort-of fun even though they’re “super old.”

We look back at financial gains our grandparents and parents made, and we blithely assume that we’ll achieve the same thing gains, maybe even more. No need to focus on making money now, let’s focus on changing the world. It doesn’t matter much how, but be important somehow. This desire for visibility isn’t simply for others to observe, but also to feel better about ourselves.

Not to get into economics, but the post-WWII boom has passed. Our free ride is over. We won’t have the same opportunity our predecessors had to raise our comfort levels nearly as easily (and side note, even in those perfect circumstances, it wasn’t easy). We, this current generation of 20-somethings, just don’t get it.

Of course, we’re not complete idiots. We all know intellectually that if we actually wanted to make enough money to pay off our mounting student loans we’d be studying something like medicine, law, or engineering instead of international relations or criminal justice. But that was our parents right? That’s not what we’re about.

Globalization. The internet. They’ve radically changed how we view our role in society. We see pictures of our selfless friends planting crops in Myanmar, hear about the smart ones founding startups in Palo Alto, listen to the gifted ones performing their digitally manipulated music, read blogs of the sweet ones volunteering in orphanages in Africa (because of course “Africa” is a country of desert and poverty). We see peoples’ favorite perceptions of themselves perpetuated on Instagram and Facebook. Their own digital highlight reels. We see only what they choose to show us, and since we’re all looking for that same splash of special significance, we inevitably only see those things that further their own perception of it.

They invite us, subconsciously or not, to compare each other. To see who’s “making it” in a twisted digital arms race where the weapons are social media and the prizes are loosely defined perceptions of significance. This isn’t a new insight, anyone who maintains the slightest online presence knows it’s happening. But too many of us are buying into this idea of selling a virtual perception to others. It influences what we post, what pictures we tag ourselves in, what books we say we’re reading. This constant comparison to each other is killing us. It’s not usually even this desire to project a certain perception of ourselves to others, but rather, to project it to ourselves.

It’s a struggle for significance.