Generations before mine have been said to be lost. The generation lost to WWI and WWII. They were truly lost. Lost in life, the loss of lives, loss of direction and identity. It isn't so strange to think it should happen again and under different circumstances; but is my generation truly lost? As lost as the ones who had they lives taken? As lost as the ones, having survived hell and horror, wandered around looking for purpose? I don't believe so. And, even if we were, the "lost" generations before mine always found themselves, somehow. And, they always made something beautiful.

The other day, I sat down at my kitchen table, and I spent an hour or so to watch a documentary curiously titled "The Lost Generation". Well, it was curious to me because I was completely unsure of the context. But the picture for the thumbnail of the video depicted a group of young adults at a Parisian nightclub in the early 1920's, so naturally, I was intrigued.

What I soon learned was that the generation who fought and died in WWI, and those who survived, were said to be of a "Lost Generation". The ones who died lost their lives, and so many of them that it seemed that an entire generation had been killed off. The ones who lived seemed lost in their direction, in their actions, in their ethics and their morals. They were raised in war, and war does not know how to raise anybody. It only kills, that is its core and its purpose.

But, what came from these shattered identities and these roaming souls was a settling down of many American artists, many of whom had just been released from their military duty at the wars end, and a developing of many a great literary, and artistic, talent and vision that changed the entire twentieth century and the centuries to come. They made something good out of their loss, because nothing is every truly lost.

I too am a part of a generation many have already deemed lost, though most of us have yet to even become adults. But, in a way, those people are right. We are lost. Just like the other generations before us, we are really, truly lost. We are, so many of us, sick in the mind and can't seem to escape it, their numbers growing along with their medications and their anxieties. Many don't read as much, run as much or go outside as much, or even speak to each other as much as people used to.

Yes, in ways many of us are lost. It is okay to recognize this. Many of us are lost to each other, lost to our parents, lost to our grandparents. We are lost to the people before us, and we are unknown to the ones ahead. We are a lost generation, incapable of being rescued. Or so it has been said. We are lost, but nothing can be lost forever, and not all of us are wandering without direction.

I am a Millennial. One of the "lost kids", if you will. I was born in the year 1997, and I will be twenty in April. I grew up with three older brothers, the eldest born in the last year of the eighties and the other two in the early nineties. We are all millennials. And, from our stereotypes, you immediately expect the very worst from us.

That we will ignore you and chose a cold, brightly lit phone over face to face conversation. That we will be selfish and expect reward for no effort. To be told that we are perfect when we are greatly flawed, human you might even say. And, that we think any difference in opinion means a direct slight against us and all that we believe in.

And while many truly believe this, regardless of their generation, for we are not the first to be capable of being snide and unkind, many certainly do not. Most of us, actually. For the quiet ones, the ones who think, tend to speak their opinions less into the great throng of stupidity that the stereotyped people who fit their description make it their life's work to type into any number of social media. The ones who think know better, and give their thoughts by word of mouth, by conversation, and on online media platforms that are filled with listening people, ready to learn something knew. I, my brothers, and most if not all of my friends (who are millennials) are not anywhere close to fitting this stereotype. And, these friends have friends of their own, and them their own, and each of us share a common trait; we are not our stereotypes.

Why? Well, honestly, because we were raised differently from those who do fit the above description, but it is also because we are simply different people. We like different things, think differently, speak differently and about different subjects, and all around, though we may share the same year of birth as those who prefer a cold, metallic phone to a person, we have little to nothing in common. You cannot simply group an entire generation into one pot and say they are all the same flavor and color. We won't be and we can't be and it's really quite impossible.

I am a millennial, and I use a typewriter every day, alongside my laptop and phone. I am still trying to command my fingers to get used to pressing down heavily on the 1952, dark green keys so that the ink will show and not be faded. My friends and I sit down at the dinner table and discuss books and how wonderful or awful the movie adaption was. On any given day I have five books that I am reading at once, taking my time with them between school, which I give my all to and from which accomplishments I get my pride from. I have conversations about my interests with people who share them, and I am not only one who likes to live and think this way. The people I speak to are my age, and I found that I am far from the only one who lives outside the confines of social media. There are many, many like this.

There are many like me, and us, and most are not what you would expect: we, millennials, are capable of many great things, and, we have already done much. In working, in living, in making a difference in our own lives, our own identities, and in developing news twists to art, music, literature, ideas, and what is deemed the right way to be a decent, kind, and fair human being.

We are millennials, and we are not lost forever, just as the lost before us weren't. Again I say, nothing is lost forever. We are young, and we are, really truly, for those who see beyond themselves (and there are many), determined to find and make in reality the things we see so clearly in our minds. We hit great blockades on the sea of life to reach what we want most, but we find a way, using the lessons we learned from the long internal wanderings we have made, how to overcome. We do what we can to make our world better because we are the ones who must live in it. And, for the next generation, we are doing our best to lay the groundwork for a more peaceful and expressing life. We understand that living life should be enjoyable and carry the marks of our individual accomplishments. This is all any generation wants, really, the ones who are awake. And there are more of us than you may think.

We are all around, the hard workers, the worriers of grades, the placers of standards upon the highest shelf, the sacrificers of blood, sweat, tears, and time. We are all around, those who recognize the energy put in is equal to the results you get in return. That hard work sometimes even reworded with a greater energy, a greater outcome than first expected. We are all around, the ones who are aware of our stereotype and do our very best to fight it, to show the world just how much good we can do.

We are an entire generation, and we are not all anything. We are many things, and we are certainly not each other. We are ourselves, as any generation is. We have those in our family who follow the pack, just as humans have always done, and those who know better than to give up their lives to an idea of an identity fabricated by people they don't know and who don't matter. There are more of us than you know who would give up weeks of sleep just to see our hard work translate their dreams into something tangible.

We are many, we are a generation, we are not one, and we are not each other. We are not the pack, and we are not the many. We are the singular come together, and we promise, I promise, that we are not what you may at first think of us, or think of me. I am of the newly lost generation, I am not and will never be whatever you think of me, and I am not alone. I am not alone, because I have people to talk to, and they talk to me, too. Pairs find pairs, and like minds find like minds. We are not all lost, and if lost at all, won't be forever.

There are more of us than you know who can see a light beyond all previously standing conventions. There are more of us who know they will, without a shadow of a doubt, change their lives into something good, and that, just like the lost generations before us, we will go on to change the world. Each generation brings something else, something new to the table, and no generation, whether Baby Boomer or X or terribly lost Millennial, can be perfect nor deplorable. We are just a small piece in the grand puzzle of our lives, slowing putting together a better picture for ourselves and others.

I am of the new lost generation, and we will change everything.