Talking 'Bout My Generation

I take great offense to articles such as this one, explaining how narcissistic and self-involved we, the Gen Yers, are.  Though we've all met people who fit the bill, I believe what little blanket truth this stereotype has stems from how our older generations have used their valuable resources and what we see as necessary to protecting our own future.

It's true, we are competitive and we do plan on rocking the working world right out of college.  We have energy, enthusiasm, and most importantly a vision for how to fix the pieces of our society that aren't working.  We enter our first jobs out of college with that mindset, but get stopped in our tracks.  No one believes in us, we stop hearing the phrase "you can be whatever you want to!" and worst of all, we discover that organizations are sometimes so stuck in their ways that the good ideas we do bring forth, along with the energy it takes to bring them to fruition, are trampled like a lion caught in a wildebeest stampede.

Older generations laugh at us and tell us we need to put in the time and gain experience before we can make an impact, but we realize that all that does is take a person's best, most energetic, most passionate years and suppress them.  It's harder to get excited about a good idea when you have three kids to feed and obligations that ensure you can't put in the overtime it takes to get things done.  We value our relationships and we don't want to end up regretting that we didn't spend enough time with our families.  Therefore, we want to get the ball rolling early because we know that a rolling ball is easier to keep moving than a stationary one is to start. 

I've seen more people from my generation quit secure, high-paying, but unfulfilling jobs to pursue careers they love making half as much money as they did before.  Based on articles like the one above, you would assume they'd be self-fulling careers with little benefit to society.  The truth is, they're not.  They're quitting for non-profits they believe in, the political arena, the army, and taking time off to join the Peace Corps.  I have seen more people in my generation pull themselves out from the corporate rock under which they were crushed, shedding the security, and taking a chance on making society better for all of us.

Despite those people, I'm admitting that our generation is a little self-centered, but you need to understand the reasons why.

We're worried about the future we'll one day soon be in charge of - one in which we have no social security, rising health care costs, and worst of all no natural resources and a dirty planet because the generations ahead of us cling to poor decisions.  Afterall, the only money I'll have for retirement is the money I save for myself.  We have no pensions and our social security buckets are drained.  No one in this country seems to want to pay a little extra so their neighbor can have a life-saving triple bypass surgery.  So how come so many college students are so enthusiastic about universal health care?  Yes, we have the longest amount of time to benefit from it, but before we do, we have to get the baby boomers through all of the health consequences of their fancy-free lifestyles.  I'm willing to do that for them if they're willing to do that for me.  The planet is a whole other can of worms that I probably shouldn't open right now. 

These are the issues our generation has to deal with, so please excuse me when I take offense to articles like the one above.  I don't see our generation as the one that has problems with narcissism and greed.  I see the older generations already hogging that space and all we want to do is move around their fortified blockade and solve these problems quickly - for all of us - so that our kids won't have to be as self-centered as we need to be to get anything done.