The Curse of the Millennials

Have you ever had a chance to talk to someone from the generation X? What do you take back from the conversation with them? If you were asked to simplify the conversation you had in a couple sentences, how would you frame it?

Personally, every time I have had to talk to people from the generation before me, I have always had to listen to how impatient “we” are. It’s as if every person in the entire generation is to be clubbed in one league and all of our insecurities and fallacies are to be deemed as common behavior by them. I can’t recount the number of times I was blamed for how someone brought their kid up, or decided their future investments, or even took the decision to marry someone. The reason? I was from the same generation and would follow in their footsteps. I may have an upbringing which is extremely different from them. My goals might be different, my opinion might to different, I might be looking for different things from life, yet, I am bound to do the same things they have done. Why am I supposed to carry the burden of the entire generation on my shoulders?

I agree that there are certain things that we do that might not agree with the people from Generation X. I know that they are our parents, and uncle and aunts and they love us. But to sum it up, Millennials are also the ones which have diverted from their given path the most. We are the risk takers and the ones experimenting with our own lives. We have decided to change the status quo. We may be impatient, we might look for results way before their time, and we might not be satisfied with a lot of things right away or might just be happy with whatever comes our way. But, we would appreciate your support, not your crude criticism.

It is definitely a little bigoted when you agree to judge us by your high standards and put us into the same box, all of us, whether or not we’re similar. But, the moment we decide to see your actions are a common consensus, we’re being judgmental. Don’t you think that these rules apply to you too? Yet, we’re the ones in the wrong. I call the people from my dad’s generation as pushover because they don’t say a thing when the other person clearly wrongs them. Suddenly, I’m the girl who is outspoken and acts too old for her own good. Why should my opinion be tagged as ostentatious when I know I haven’t done anything to bring that judgment on me? All I did was speak up when someone clearly tried to cut me off and push me back. Shouldn’t I have the right to say my thing?

The other day, I was driving to lunch with my parents and stop at a traffic signal. This guy decided I’m the perfect person to cut off in line to go ahead and blocks me at the traffic signal. I’m obviously livid and decided to honk my head off at this guy! He cut me off and has the audacity to be smug about it. The end will surprise you though. My father asked me to stop this nonsense and not aggravate the other guy so as to result in an altercation.

We always say we want to the kind of people our parents envisioned us to be. isn't that what they were pushing us towards, all these years? But, while we were becoming the people they wanted us to be, we changed, moving towards things that we liked and on the way, we started questioning the world in our own unique way. Is it completely wrong for us to hope that even though we may not be the people they thought we'd be, we're still people who grew up listening to them and that reflects in our actions?

I've heard countless people say that the millennials have always been extremely misunderstood. I could never find an ounce of truth in that. It was almost an alien thought to me. How could an entire sect of people become misunderstood when there were so many people to talk to. But, I was converted, albeit that was a terrible turn of fate. I wouldn't go so far as to say that each millennial is not taken seriously. It's just that a lot of what we do and why we do it is misconstrued by people endlessly.

I guess that is the curse of being a millennial. We do things, we may be successful, but we will always be the ones getting the short end of the stick.