Hi, hivers! Today's post is a rather "lengthy" passage because it holds my "gentle criticism" on today's (our) generation, Millenials and Gen-Z combined. I wrote this way back in 2020 when I read lots of articles about how depression is increasing its numbers among the youth. As I thought about it, I began writing this piece. I haven't published this in any socmed apps or even in my previous personal blog, because I think it's all over the place. But I'm finally letting it out in the open, so that I can somehow improve, and also so that I can share my thoughts/observations. So please feel free to drop a comment about what you think. 🙏♥️
"Ignorance is a bliss." This quote can be applicable to those who came before us. During their time around 1900s, people didn't know a lot about "depression, anxiety, stress." And look at them: some lived for 100 years. This is the generation who witnessed countless of wars and have lived to tell the tale. I say again: wars. All that chaos and deaths and violence and boiling rage-and-hate. Did they suffer from "depression, anxiety, stress"? Well, maybe. Maybe not. Maybe. I do not have the statistics to tell you that. But still, despite that, they seem "well" in a sense that they have cultivated their own families and some of them who are still living now can smile ear to ear and can tell us about how hard life was but "if I gave up I wouldn't be where I am now and I'm glad I didn't and remained strong in the face of hardships."
And look at us now: this generation who grew up with the Internet. The countless researches about how the percentage of depression is increasing worldwide, at each passing year. The generation, that, at a press of a button on the screen, all the information can be accessed in a matter of nano-seconds. Fast. We like it fast. And with this overwhelming sense of knowledge, we tend to treat any data as true and then we believe (with some few exceptions, of course). So we self-diagnose. "We are suffering from this and that." Then as if by magic, we believe it's true, and live as if it is. And we're oh so stressed. We're terribly sad. We are depressed (though it may be true, we need a medical diagnosis for this, not a self diagnosis.) Let's not accept the information by what they are and rather scrutinize and screen them. Also: let's not overthink. Life should be simple. We youngsters tend to make it complicated.
((I know that it is unhealthy to compare one generation to another, and I even did a YT video on that, the one about empathy. But I did compare two gens in the above paragraphs because I was trying to make a point.))
We have become a generation who's easily offended and who takes offense pretty seriously. We get one "dislike" and then we start making a fuss about it and make a big deal and take things too personally.
We have become a generation who's pretty good at making memes, making "hugot" remarks, good at making vlogs and editing lots of photos and videos and updating all our socials with all the things that keep us busy and mindlessly going through our timeline/feed just so we feel "busy". But wait. Are these "essential skills" in getting through life?
We have become a generation who worships faux positivity. We're so consumed in "feeling positive ALL THE TIME", that, whenever we feel a bit negative, we then beat ourselves up for feeling crappy. As if not feeling positive is not a valid feeling. As if we're robots.
We have become a generation who is petty. We make big deal out of itsy bitsy tiny issues. And we like to be in "everyone's business" because of FOMO: fear of missing out. We feel the need that we have to know everything about our friends and our family circle and even those artistas we idolize--- we NEED to know EVERYTHING! No wonder how we don't achieve peace within us because we made a business out of everyone's business. There's just so little room for so so much drama in life.
We have become a generation who feels like we are entitled to every single thing amazing and beautiful and perfect. We grew up being told by grown-ups that "hey little one you can have everything in life." Now that we have grown up, and we actually can't have everything we want in life, we beat ourselves up. Or we blame people. And we so easily lose hope. Because we were promised we'd have everything we want but then cannot. And also when we don't achieve perfection, we easily get discouraged. And deeply "sad and troubled".
We have become a generation who is obsessed with all hashtag goals that there are (fitness goals, relationship goals, health goals, etcetera). We then beat ourselves up when we don't feel like we don't have any goals achieved within a week or a month.
We have become a generation so obsessed with looking good aka outside looks matter. We focus our attention on surface level "happiness", when people seem to "like" us on social media. We are obsessed with looking good that whenever we look at the mirror, we think we're not good looking enough because we're far from Liza Soberano or Lisa of Blackpink or Selena Gomez or whoever we idolize. Comparison has been the thief of joy all along. With so much photos and stories on socmed we consume these and then compare our "boring, pathetic life" with those glossy glamorous edited curated highlight reels of our friends and people we look up to. It's so easy to get jealous and hate our lives for being far from the "amazing" lives of these people. It's very easy to feel like we don't measure up. (But hey, we don't really know the story behind every glamorous edited amazing photos, do we?)
We have become a generation who is very impatient. We dislike waiting. We want everything in an instant. Instant coffee, instant noodles, instant boyfriend or girlfriend at a swipe or at a wave. We don't realize that anything we achieve in a rush can also be so easily taken in a snap as well. We fail to realize that for something to last for a long time, we need to cultivate it and let it grow and blossom and bloom. That we need to get our hands dirty (and suffer a little) to do the works we need for any relationship to grow and have a strong foundation, that will last for a long, long time. We wonder how come our relationships and friendships easily fall apart these days-- we forget that we didn't even had a strong solid foundation for such to remain strong throughout the years.
We have become a generation who don't like to be told. We refuse to listen to the counsel of others, especially the wise grown-ups. We feel like we know everything (we have the Internet and Google, remember?)
We have become a generation who measures our co-human beings by the number of their followers on Twitter or their likes and hearts on Facebook. We tend to equate a person's value by his or her "numbers". We quantify a person's value as if it can measured. When in fact a person's value can never ever be measured with any human made standards whatsoever.
We like to label things. We create words to label things because for us not having a label to a certain thing or person or feeling makes us feel lost. That's why we create terms like ghosting and orbiting and stalking. As if these petty terminologies define our very existence.
We rush to fall in love. We don't realize we have feen fooled by the countles movies or K-dramas we have watched. Life is not an all-ever happy ever after. Love is not an all-ever happy ever after. That's why Earth is Earth and heaven is heaven. Do not expect heaven on Earth. Because the truth is, Earth is full of suffering. Life is full of suffering. And the sooner we embrace and accept that fact, then the more we can be at peace with our own suffering. Suffering teaches us countless of life lessons that we will not otherwise learn should we not sufffer. But our generation does not want to suffer. We even complain at the smallest itsy bitsy tiny problem we have, like maybe slow internet connection or the usual traffic in our main roads. In short, we do not realize that love... takes time.
We have confused productivity with divided attention. We believe that in oder to be productive we have to attend to lots of things all at the same time. We like to keep ourselves "busy", such that we have confused silence, stillness and pause for being unproductive. We feel guilty when we "take a break" and so we then go on with this vicious "busy" cycle. No wonder we easily get tired and burned out at this "rat race".
And actually, there's more, because much can be said about our generation. But amma stop there.
Yes, we may have lots of things to work on, but we also have lots of things we can be proud of. So long as we know what those things are, I think we can be alright. We will be alright. You will be alright. We can always choose to be better. You can be better.
Life is one helluva ride, I guess. And it is important to enjoy the ride, and not to hurry to reach the destination. We'll all get there, a step at a time. Remember that we are all works-in-progress. So let's not beat ourselves up. Life is life is life. C'est la vie.
‘Til the next post, hivers! Remember that you are loved beyond borders and beyond time & space. Okay? Okay. 💛❤️
Ciao for now! 🤗🥰
This original article is written by Jong, the blogger behind writetowander.com. All photos are hers, too.
Hive-llo, everyone! Welcome to Jong's little buzz-y corner in Hive. Jong believes that every person she meets can teach her a thing or two (or three, or more) about life. She shares her love for life here-- the captivating beauty of life! To be more specific, but not necessarily in this order, she's interested in: wisdom, love, poetry, single life, books, travel, health&fitness, fashion, gratitude, unspoken hurts, heartbreaks and healing. Lastly, she loves Jesus.
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