I haven't written in months. Why? Great question - one I've been asking myself since the last time I tried putting pen to paper. Left feeling uninspired, passionless, and incapable of accomplishing anything creative I wondered if I was slipping into some un-characterizable, unknown, form of depression. Why wasn't I happy? Why did it seem so hard to organize my thoughts into some sort of coherency? Why did it seem like every time I tried all that would come out was nonsensical, unintelligible, and unimportant venting?
Do I really have nothing to say?
Do I feel nothing?
No - that's not the case. I just fell into the perpetual stereotype of myself - a lazy, underemployed, under-caring, typical 20-something millennial striving for "happiness." The discussion of our millennial generation has become some sort of a fad. Articles are appearing everywhere, on almost every blog source and news outlet, but they all are just regurgitations of the same things. We are told that our generational characteristics include being "lazy, underemployed, under-caring," but is that really true? We claim to be striving for love, passion within our work, and happiness - but who doesn't want that? We all want the same things, but we can't accept that our wants can only be fulfilled by ourselves. We externalize when we should internalize.
Love is impossible if we don't love ourselves first. I see friends continually looking externally to find it, never making the conscious effort to understand who they are internally, what they are actually looking for, or what they actually need. The attention and pretense of love has come to be enough. Manipulating ourselves into thinking the unfortunate monotony that comes with dating in this day and age is what manifests "real, stable, and long-lasting" love is built of. Saying it has become enough and showing it has become unnecessary. We can't recognize the love we should want to accept, or appreciate it, unless it slaps us in the face, and by that point - it's often too late.
If love is impossible, then how will we ever find passion? One is required to have the other and I believe that, as a generation, we will never truly understand love or the facets which construct it. The trust, faith, and obligation that love seeks is lost on our selfishness and if we can't understand how to build a great love we will never experience fulfilling passion. Brought up thinking we deserve the world, and that it is our oyster, we set our standards and expectations so inextricably high for what we think we want and deserve that we can barely pick up the pieces when we inevitably fail. But passion isn't developed purely out of love, that is merely the planted seed from which is grows - it comes from our response to struggle and failure. Ben Franklin said, "if passion drives you, let reason hold the reins," but we've grown into beings that are driven by reason and our need for quantifiable success. We hope for passion but it's generally passed over for security.
I think its time to reevaluate how we deem success. Working eighty hours a week - in a job we only sometimes like - that provides a good paycheck while adding nothing of meaningful value to our lives is definitely not what I signed up for in this game of life, but it seems to be the path most chosen. Tirelessly working for the weekend has become such a widespread theme that the notion of "doing what you love" is slowly becoming obsolete.
I suppose I'm naive and irresponsible in my thinking but I find it to be outside of myself to muster up the energy and dedication required to live such a dreary lifestyle. I want no part of it, no part of the overreaching sadness that accompanies a life unfulfilled. I want happiness. No, I demand it. I don't think I deserve anything less than it. I don't think anyone deserves anything less than it. But who really knows what being happy means anymore? It's become such a fleeting experience that we are rarely blessed with its truest form. When is the last time you heard someone express how overwhelmingly happy they were with every aspect of their life? I cannot, confidently, say that I've ever heard someone say this. There is always something holding us back from it. We are so incapable of realizing bliss because we are too busy realizing imperfection. Our need to find fault revokes our ability to experience anything more than temporary happiness.
As individuals, we are lost. As a generation, we are hopeless. We are so pathetically uninspired that we don't actually know how to love, develop passion, or be happy. We're stuck in a "millennial rut" - striving for these things without really understanding the personal components that will lead us there. We don't know ourselves or make an effort to, reducing us to generalities. We are nothing more than walking stereotypes and wanting more is extraordinary. Our complacency is our greatest fault. Our insistency on blaming previous generations for providing us with the perfect conditions in which to grow into such bratty, selfish, demanding, and "tired" individuals is exceptional. We were given too easy a ride and now we don't know what to do with ourselves.
In being provided with everything we've, simultaneously, lost it all.
