Tales of a Dreamer

@LaurMoneyMartin of Elite Daily wrote a fantastic article (find it here!) that really got me thinking about life and what it means to be a millennial. In the past six months my entire worldview has changed. Growing up I had always wanted to be a teacher. Go to college, move to the city, get a big-girl job, move to the burbs, get married, have kids, work until you’re 65 and hopefully have enough saved to retire; this is the format of what will be a riveting and inspirational life, they said.

​​Many people my age, assume they have some format or check-list to guide their life in a specific direction. A direction that has shaded our realities to bring what we assume will be money and success.  The disgusting truth is that many of these realities bring 7 day work weeks with 2 or worse, 3, jobs, just so we can make enough money to afford the working life. Whatever happened to working a double shift to afford that adorable purse or the vacation you’ve been wanting to take? When did working two jobs stop being a rare occurrence? Which generation decided that two parents’ salaries weren’t enough to support themselves and their family? Who decided that following your dreams could only be justified by working away the first twenty-five years of your life? This is the difference I see between previous generations and mine. Millennials have a new thought process on following our dreams. We don’t see the point in working our lives away if we aren’t passionate about what we are doing or if our souls can’t be fed in the process.
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“We’ll be a culture founded on art, love and music. We won’t be biased against sexual preference, skin color or nationality. We won’t start wars or throw bombs. We won’t kick people out for wearing turbans or living in Palestine. We won’t have half our generation’s marriages end up in divorce.” Millennials, as I have known us to be, are overall the most accepting group of people who can actually say they have learned from the mistakes of those before us. Now here’s the catch: older generations tell us, ‘Learn from our mistakes, do better than us, have more opportunities than I could have ever dreamed of’. But when my generation actually decides we want to do all of those things, society gets scared and objects to our desire to follow our dreams. Fortunately for us, you know what? You’ve taught us too well, because we aren’t going anywhere. Our dreams are out there; they are within reach. And although it may take a lot of ups and downs to get there, nothing is going to stop us.

“We will welcome adversity… and talk about making the world a better place. Because at the end of the day, we can’t possibly f*ck it up any worse than they did.” What makes me proud of my generation is the thought that most of the people I have met that are my age, have similar goals as I do. We want to change the way the world works, influence the world with our common sense and inspirations. So where’s the harm if we don’t follow your rules or your check-lists to a successful lifestyle, if we change the world for the better, and quite possibly, save it? Thought so. Millennials are, as the name suggests, the future of our world: the trailblazers of the new lifestyle. We are following our dreams and filling our souls. We will save this world from the horror that our ancestors have poured upon us. And yes, we will love every second of it. Get with it.

Because life is for living.