Talkin' 'bout my generation!

Humanity right through the ages is a very peculiar best. Each of us, as you know, has our own tale to tell, but collectively, those tales overlap very often, which is a good thing. It's vital for mutual understanding and respect. But today, we are divided, politically, aesthetically and culturally, into generations. That concept is quite old, too; it predates Strauss and Howe (Google them if necessary) and the '50s youth explosion et al. And now, it's so ingrained in the culture that most of us can pretty easily identify pop culture items synonymous with every generation or era, from World War I onwards.

I was born in 1988, which makes me a Millennial. Millennials are generally accepted as those born between 1980 and 1995. Now, to my judgment, these are the most significant trends and events of the era of the Millennials, at least so far:

- 9/11 and the Iraq War.
- Barack Obama's presidential election.
- Social media.
- Online downloading.
- The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
- The GFC.
- The hipster subculture.
- Y2K.
- Every shooting massacre in the US, since and including Columbine.

Combine all of those and I'm not sure what they'd make, but they all happened, and one way or another, they will define my fellow Millennials and I likely for many years, just as disco and MTV have come to define the Baby Boomers and Gen-X respectively.





But psychologically and professionally, there are stereotypes and notions that have also come to define us, I think unfairly. We have often been reported to leave home later overall than any previous generation; all I can say to this is I moved out exactly a month before I turned 25 (I remember the exact date because it was also my nephew's first birthday), by which time I'd hoped to be living independently. Or we apparently end up moving back in with our parents for financial reasons, which has been called the boomerang effect. We also have a reputation at work for expecting everything to be gifted to us on a silver platter. This one I sort of accept and reject. Many kids are surely spoilt growing up (and my siblings would probably say I was as the youngest, but I wasn't), but some Millennials having a sense of entitlement does not make us all Veruca Salts (although in my first job I had a fellow Millennial colleague who was totally a male Veruca; I still want to send him down a nut-hole, too). However, a catch-22 so frustrating and common it'd make Joseph Heller rich all over again is that nobody can gain experience in anything if nobody's willing to GIVE them any. Moreover, I'm surely not the only Millennial who knows you'll value something more if you really work hard to earn it. Just because we've grown up in an age of "celebrities" like the Hiltons and the Kardashians doesn't mean we all look up to them.

One more notion about Millennials I want to combat here is that of us being politically apathetic. Now, look, politics can be so prevalent some people might never want to hear about it, or they may just not find politics as a subject interesting. That's understandable, too. And I acknowledge the groundwork previous generations have made through their own activism, or actually serving as politicians. But who gave rise to the Arab Spring? The Black Lives Matter and Occupy movements? "Yes We Can"? Change.org? Largely, Millennials, who also have been very prominent in the push for marriage equality worldwide, and for the end of the Iraq War. And for those who seem complacent with the status quo, that may just be cynicism (and I'm not one at all to criticise that) or because they're over being told what they should and shouldn't support.


But while I must emphasize I mean for none of this to stigmatize or condemn previous generations, I want to close here with a reminder for them. Individually and collectively, Millennials still have much to learn. But all of you were our age once, and I'm sure it's easy for you to remember how it felt to settle into young adulthood: buying your first car, getting your first long-term job, moving out and whatnot. How frustrating and confusing it was when you had a setback on the road to success, but then how special it felt when you got there. For better or worse, now it's our time to take those journeys, and soon our children will replace us. That's just the natural order. And we will need your help settling into adulthood, but we can do it, we will be grateful for any support, and who knows? On a more profound level, we (that's you and us this time) could ultimately just help, and teach, each other.