After scrolling through countless posts on social media, it’s not hard to miss that accomplishments are what most people define themselves with. And accomplishments have different meanings depending on who you’re asking. People my age, the Zillennials born between the 1990’s to 1997, are probably the most most torn generation when it comes to the definition of success. Half of us are getting married, having family, and living the life they witnessed from our parents. Then there’s the other half who are redefining the idea of being an adult. While living unique lifestyles, the contrast has never been more defined until now, the age of social media.
The irony that humans live in the most connected era today but living collectively lonelier than ever is a shame. Exposure from the internet makes us compare and nitpick ourselves. Ages before, our ancestors who were hunting elusive meat, and shoveling railroads in the heat surely must have thought to themselves, “This sucks.” They look around and there’s not much better going on. They are not as conscious about what they are doing so they continue to sweat away with the task at hand. Hundred years later and nothing much has changed about having a hard time, but today, when people have nothing much better to do, they scroll on their phone and immediately they are bombarded with news and images of someone somewhere having a good time. Now they think it sure is nice to be them — they go back to what they are doing with afterthought that there is something better than this. This brief exposure isn’t that significant at first glance, but this results to subconsciously comparing our selves, and and start looking more into our current situations.
It is human nature to want more and get the best out of what we can in life. With this ingrained in us, we through rush life, pushing through with adrenaline towards the next goal that we forget we are in the middle of something we had just accomplished. Millennials and early Gen X live in a generation completely different than their parents who have accomplished x and y by the time they were 20-something. If we use the way that our parents and the people that came before them as the standard of living our lives correctly, aren’t are we restricting ourselves to these limited and outdated standards? Their time and glory has come and passed. The formula of success is adapting to the chan modern world. Living up to the past and dated standards is like growing backwards. There are We may not see it now, but our generation is paving the way of new standards and values for the next generations. Just think about how far we’ve come with mental health and social issues. Boomers think we are entitled and whiny because we had it better than them as post-war babies, but time will come when we will be calling out our younger generations for taking the privileges they enjoy for granted. We are the generation who are brave enough to confront the established toxic norms. We will be the generation who fought for the next generations’ rights.
If we use the older generations’ expectations as the standard to live our lives correctly, aren’t are we limiting ourselves to these outdated way of living?
Did we trade our access to information around the world with “happiness?” I don’t know. But before we take on these burdens and be hard on ourselves, slow down. We got all the time. The world isn’t going anywhere, and the times are only changing as ever. Yet, we only have one self for our entire lifetime. So isn’t it logical that the only thing we have to care about in this world is the self that is going to witness and be part of the seasons that come and go? Humans are the only specie attached with destination. But nature works in flow, allowing the earth to come in and take whatever form. Structures and systems are essential to civilization and that makes us human, but by going against the nature which is obssessing about destination, is unnatural; thus, inducing stress to ourselves. Our worries might sometimes feel bigger than ourselves and we start shrinking, but remember that the world infinitely flows, so trust that are our worries will also pass.
Slow down. We are only in our twenties, and certainly, we are only humans.
