The Sad Reality of Our Generation

“Back in my day….”

I hear those words more often than I could imagine. It seems like all my parents talk about whenever it comes to something they wish I would do.

I’m sure many of our grandparents said similar things to our parents, and the previous generation as well. But why?

Is it just some nostalgic flashback from days gone by, a shadow of simpler times? Is it merely an echo from ocean waves that somehow, though they haven’t changed in centuries, just sounded more beautiful 20 years ago? Is it, perhaps, a longing for youth, a silent scream begging for the health, strength, and image of a younger self to be restored? Or maybe, just maybe, do they actually have a point?

Our grandparents were a generation of heroes. By our, I mean millennials. Our sweet, lovely old grandparents who give us butterscotch every time we visit, thinking we love them even though honestly, we really only accept it out of politeness, grew into adulthood by fighting in the bloodiest massacre of a war in all of human history. Yes, Gertrude Jones once spent her days installing airplane parts onto dogfighters. Charles Engel left his mothers house at 17, dressed to the nines in his poised army uniform, only to return home missing a leg, with his face and body scarred from shrapnel; his friend Budsy didn’t return at all.

But they came back and by George, they made it. They took the world by the short and curlies, and crammed “AMERICA” to the top. After they were finished fighting the wars, they came back to build our prosperity one brick at a time.

Then they had kids… a lot of kids. So many, in fact, that we now have a term for them: Baby Boomers. Our parents were raised in a time of economic prosperity, when America was number one. They grew up without much of the stress or pain of the previous generation, and it showed in much of their attitudes. They moved onto the next big thing: social change.

Our grandparents, being the hard workers they were, tended to be quite absent. They expected our parents to be independent, to live up to their own legacies and grow up without much guidance just like they did. But our parents were from a different time; they had no idea what they were doing, so they went and ruined the economy. They made mistakes due to the utter lack of guidance, and barely kept the wheels spinning. But while they lacked much of their hero-parents’ experience, they made up for with the same moxie our grandparents had. And then they had children too… Us. Oh, brother.

For the first time, our parents knew what love felt like. They adored us. We were the culmination of everything they worked for, and the only thing that mattered in the end. They didn’t want us to make the same mistakes they did. They didn’t want us to grow up by ourselves the way they did. So they doted us.

“Everyone is special!”

“Everyone is a winner!”

“Everyone should chase their dreams!”

In soccer, everyone gets a trophy, so as to not be left out. But this left a dilemma: Not everyone deserves a trophy. Our parents created a generation of delusional grandeur by infecting us with confirmation bias of the highest degree. Only that which we agreed with was true. We grew up in a world where we’re told that everyone can be like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Elon Musk. But we aren’t. Those people created their world through endless failure, repeated suffering and unfiltered tenacity. They clawed their way to the top, eroding their fingers into broken stubs along the way. We were taught that everyone is unique and worthy, but not taught how to truly become worthy.

Then we grew up and realized, “Oh sh**, I’m not special.”

So we create an alter ego online, hiding our insecurity behind a mask of endless pictures and false realities. We post “inspirational quotes” on social media to inspire others while our own motivation is fleeting, disappearing day after day. We’ve become a generation with no virtue. No resilience. No values. Our morality is entirely contingent on the premise of making everyone feel accepted, even at the cost of their own health.

We pierce our bodies and cover our skin with tattoos in a vain effort to stand out. We insist on creating an entire political atmosphere based on this computer generated identity, and threaten to abandon the love of our parents if they don’t comply. Tolerance is no longer enough. We want full-blown acceptance, even agreement to our delusions. We force others to agree with us on the flaccid fallacy of, “because I care more than you do, I’m automatically the better person.” But we don’t care. We just want to be appreciated for how special we are. We put our leg in whatever fight seems altruistic, without doing any research on the matter first. We scream for “causes” then complain when the aftermath isn’t what we expected.

The ugly part? Half of the causes we support are immoral. But they sound moral, because “Equality!” right? We fight and argue to be able to do things that lack virtue. We promote all the hedonistic recklessness of the world because “You shouldn’t judge,” instead of accepting that our indulgences are exactly what causes us to fail. So we stuff ourselves until we can’t walk, screw like rabbits until we can’t screw anymore, and kill ourselves slowly in a desperate attempt to fill the gaping hole in our hearts. But we can’t fill it, no matter how much we indulge. If we would just wake up and try to find meaning through effort and building our value in life, maybe that hole could be filled. But instead, we do what we want with reckless abandon, and anyone who says otherwise is a bigot, a judgemental <insert irrelevent identity here>.

We appreciate the safety our parents provided us, because we were never taught to defend ourselves. We would even exchange our freedom for that false sense of safety. We lull ourselves into complacency with our fake identities, convincing each other about how awesome our lives are, making each other green with envy over our falsified lifestyle. But hey, that’s all okay because we are special, right?

Except we didn’t have any of the attitude, virtue, tenacity, value system, or principles that made the former generations truly special. It’s what they did with themselves that made them successful. It’s the blood, sweat, and tears that made them special. We’ve disrupted the natural order by forcing others to recognize us for things which should not be recognized.

But we deserve equality and prosperity on the basis that we are all supposed to be winners, right?

We are special after all, right?

… I mean… we have to be… right? Right?

I am special…………. right?

<crickets chirping>