I am a millennial born in 1995. Forget all the crap media has tried over the past years telling you how we use all our money for avocado toasts. Millennials are the broken generation and we know it.
Millennials grew up with the internet as we know it. We had MySpace and MSN. I still remember somehow being “friends” with people whose names I already forgot who lived miles and miles away. Now there’s more like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and lo and behold, holy Tinder. We are the generation that connections with other humans have never been stronger…but when we do make a connection, people tell us we are being a damn millennial.
Life is hard and everyone knows it. Millenials, we know it. We’ve always known it. But older people keep telling us life is hard so we need to be harder. Take me for an example, shall we?
I live in Hong Kong and my parents are both working. My grandparents helped taking care of me and my brother. We are definitely not rich but comfortable in life. I finished my undergraduate degree with a debt of over 168,000HKD and I’m close to finishing a masters degree that costs more than half of my four years programme. For the twenty two years that I’ve been alive, I’ve been spending and spending. Why.
I am still a firm believer that education changes people. As I hope to gain enough qualifications to be a lecturer or even a professor, I know a tenure would secure me with all I need. A good salary, health insurance, and a home. Yes, that’s right, dormitory for teaching staff.
Now, what does this have anything to do with millenials not knowing how to love?
- We don’t know how to love in the the way people used to
- We don’t know how to love without being judged
- We don’t know how to love ourselves
We are judged everyday for not living in our own place in our 20s. They say, oh we used to do parttime jobs that paid off our college debts. We didn’t have phones. We are better than you, is what most of them say.
You see adult news anchors being salty over a black American teen getting accepted to twenty colleges with full ride scholarship. You see adult politicians shaming student activists when all they ask is not to get killed by guns at school. What I see in my everyday life, is how small our lives are when compared to what our lives should have looked like through the lens they have forced upon our head and bind us like a olive branch crown.
Social media is great! That’s where I connect with my friends and meet new ones from all around the world. Some I get to spend holidays with in person and it is great. But they want to shame everything our generation claims. Social media is toxic. Social media is self-entitlement. It’s not wrong, but it is not the truth. The truth is millenials are struggling to live without judgement from everyone including ourselves.
Trying to live your truth is difficult. Almost every friend of mine around the same age has problems. Anxiety is common, depression is everywhere. It is a crisis that affects everyone on earth. But instead of dealing with the declining mental health of the younger generations, they just say that we are all brainless kids who dab and eat tide pots.
I guess my point is I am fed up with this. “Millenial” is a label they created to shame their younger competitors. So, instead of rejecting it, embrace it with open arms and pride. What’s better than proving disbelievers wrong?
