Generation Y Is Doomed To Fail

“I don’t feel at home in this generation” — Generation by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

I have always prided myself on being an individual. However, no matter how much of an individual I think I am, I know that I fit into a few categories. It’s something that can’t be helped, we can all be categorized somehow. And given my birthdate, I can be categorized as part of Generation Y. Or the Millennial Generation. Or a generation of no good lazyasses who don’t know what the hell they’re doing and who are going to bring this great country down! It depends on who you talk to, really.

I can’t explain why, but I don’t feel as if I belong to this generation. I don’t mean that I would have fit in better with the Babyboomer or Generation X crowd. And I don’t mean that I feel as if I’m ahead of my time. For whatever reason, I simply do not feel as if I fit in. And I don’t know why.

But still, I am part of this generation. And it pains me when we get a bad rap. Every generation believes that its successor is doomed to fail. I’m only 25 and I already feel that way about the kids in school now (but I am trying to practice what I preach and give them a chance).

It seems every generation has the expectation of failure branded on it. The children of the 60′s and 70′s were good-for-nothing, pot-smoking, free-loving pansy hippies! Generation X was so disconnected, they had nothing to stay or stand for, and they listened to Nirvana! And Generation Y? Yeah, we’re expected to fall flat on our faces. But what’s new?

Every generation has its struggles. Our grandparents had the Great Depression and WWII. Our parents had the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movements. And we’ve got two wars in the Middle East, The Great Recession, the responsibility of fixing social security (or finally admitting that it’s broken), and trying to figure out what the hell we can do about Global Warming. Yeah, we’ve got a lot on our plate.

On top of that, it seems that our world is constantly changing. Just look at how rapidly the world as we know it is fading into memory. Everything’s going digital. Soon CD’s, books, video game discs — all of that will be obsolete. There will be no physical copies of these things, and the few that still exist will be antiques. Communication is evolving every day. We haven’t even scratched the surface on Internet laws (piracy, bullying, scamming).

And who knows what lies ahead for us. Only time will tell, and the future is approaching very quickly. So we’d better get to work. All of us: Generation Y, Generation X, Baby Boomers — we’ve got to stop pointing the finger and start working together. In fact, let’s gets started right now.

Tagged as: Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, Millennial Generation, Millennials, The Great Recession