Could it be the advanced technology we so flippantly purchase, knowing full well that we'll just grab the newest model next year? Is it perhaps the increased understanding of the universe, from which we can only benefit? Maybe it's increased job diversity; the boundless opportunities to find a profession that will use our talents and skills the best? Actually, it's probably the medical advances from which we reap the reward of certain diseases being nearly eradicated.
Sadly though, it is none of these things.
The best part of being a millennial is being reminded how easy we have it. It's being reminded that we haven't done a lick of "hard work" in our entire lives. Truly, the best part of being a millennial is not that there is increased acceptance in the world due to people speaking up about injustice, oh no, the best part is being laughed off and told "stop being so easily offended, take a joke." It's being told to speak up and care and have an opinion as a teenager, and then once we did speak up as adults, the "adultier" adults decided that our opinions aren't valid because we haven't lived long enough to know what "real" hardship is.
Living in the generation with the most advanced technology, the most increased acceptance and understanding of the importance of diversity, and living in a time of ever-expanding opportunities for discovery, the absolute best part is being told that I won't make it because I'm a spoiled brat. Never mind the two jobs I worked in high school. Never mind working through college and managing to live without major debt on my own. I'm just a spoiled kid who wants the shiny new iPhone and has no clue how the "real world" works. I only think in 140 characters at a time, how could I possibly understand the nuanced intricacies of politics and social justice? I obviously don't know the first thing about how to be an adult, especially if I live with family members in an effort to save money. I'm just being enabled, I'm not going out there and putting my shoulder to the wheel. I'm not working hard enough.
Never mind that our generation grew up during the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Never mind that the country is in massive debt, and completely disregard the fact that in order to get a decent enough paying job most millennials will have to take out student loans to pay for their education. And heaven forbid we ask that the minimum wage jobs we work start slowly raising the wage so that maybe, just maybe, working through college might mean that we wouldn't have quite as much debt.
How selfish, how entitled we must be, especially as women in this age to ask that our reproductive health be our decision and not that of an old man with a history of sexually assaulting women. What are we thinking, asking that rapists serve an actual prison sentence rather than a summer in jail? Those pesky millennial feminists that don't laugh at every joke a guy tells, that look them in the eyes and tell them what we will and will not accept in a relationship or even life because we're tired of being told to stop expecting better than what we're given.
Us millennials, man. Turning an open palm to the world, expecting to be treated as humans. Getting offended by your racist Halloween costume, or that you made that rape joke, or that you said they had to be a "real woman" to use the women's bathroom. We all really just need to take a "chill pill." But not really, because if we are open about any mental health issues, we're told it's bad to be dependent on those chill pills to feel normal.
The absolute best part of being a millennial is being told to act like an adult while simultaneously being told that nothing we're doing will ever amount to anything better than what those before us have done. It's being told to care and being laughed at for caring "too much." It's being told to be serious and not being taken seriously.
But what are we complaining about? At least we have iPhones.
