Growing up, my parents told me I was special. I played parks & rec soccer, and at the end of the season, we all got trophies at the team banquet for "participation". I ate it all up back them, but now I look back and think "Wow, so I basically got rewarded for breathing. What do I get for dying?"
The term "millennial" is not often used with a tone of endearment. As Simon Sinek, author, speaker, and consultant who writes on leadership and management for RAND corporation, puts it, the generation of young adults born in 1984 or after were "dealt a bad hand". Ironically, it's such a simple phrase to describe a complex societal issue.
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One major finger on this "bad hand" is parenting. Our folks raised us believing in the utilization of positive affirmation to boost their children's happiness, confidence, and self-esteem. While those types of encouragement are wonderful support tools, the problem arose when that positive affirmation started to become overused.
Sports teams and classrooms suddenly became all-inclusive. Students got A's not because they earned them but because their parents complained to the teachers. Kids who played with good sportsmanship and scored goals experienced a devalued sense of worth because the medal they earned through their accomplishments also went to the kids who contributed nothing. While the adults in these scenarios certainly had good intentions of making ALL the children feel good about themselves, in hindsight it did more harm than helping.
Fast forward ten or so years and those kids are now young adults- fresh out of college graduates who are eager to enter the workforce. The "good sportsmanship" kid gets the job promotion while the "participation" kid does not. The latter experiences a loss of entitlement and begins to feel demoralized.
These kids who grow up without being taught how to handle last place or poor grades do not learn how to accept defeat and how to grow from it. Subsequently they do not understand the value of meeting goals and the victory of a hard-earned achievement. When they do attain success, they are left yearning for more because they never learned what feeling fulfilled is like.
Furthermore, employers have no idea how to handle this emotional generation. Corporations are taking advantage of the situation, choosing short-term gain over long-term profit, therefore neglecting to properly manage, motivate, and invest in the potential that today's young adults have to offer. Young adults get criticized for being lazy and still living at home with our parents well into our twenties, yet it's those same critics who are financially disabling us with school debt and low salaries, so that we have no other options.
This is all part of the "bad hand" that we millenials were dealt. I don't believe we are to blame for these shortcomings, nor do I believe our parents are to blame either, for they did not purposefully hinder our thought processes. But what I do believe is that millenials do not have to become a self-prophecy who live out the predicted, technologically-induced state of incapability to manage the world in a grown-up fashion.
It's not our fault that we turned out the way we are, but it is our fault if we choose not to advance from it and live meaningful, fruitful lives. Time on Earth is short and there's a narrow window for making a positive impact. So I ask again- what do I get for dying? I get peace for knowing that I, a millennial, learned, lived, and made a difference in my own life as well as others.
