Happy Diwali, people! Light up your lives. :)
I often hear complaints about my generation, OUR generation, the Facebook, Blackberry or iPod generation, as we're often labelled. I'm sure you hear the complaints too: we are too rowdy, too impulsive, too fast-paced, too easygoing, too lazy, too demanding, too immoral, too materialistic, too greedy, too "insert endless stream of apparently negative adjectives".
We are also, according to a recent study, "too lonely". (Please click here to know more.)
More and more youth are falling into depression, the world over. More and more young people, like you and I, who have their whole lives ahead of them, are turning to suicide, if not homicide or other forms of violence and social psychopathy. In fact, I won't be surprised if YOU, who's reading this right now, have at some point considered ending your life, even if it was just a fleeting thought. I know I have.
They are disturbing facts, yet the only major response they generate are more statements of how we are too ungrateful, too self-centered, too impatient, too impossible, etc etc.
Why doesn't anyone ever scrape the surface a bit to pinpoint the underlying reasons WHY we are like this?
Quite simply put, it's because we are different. We don't accept societal norms and regulations that have been around forever and ever. We question things. We don't take 'no' for an answer. We wonder who we are, and why. We seek meaningfulness beyond the standard, mundane things that our parents and other oldies prescribe for life, like religion and marriage. We look for excitement, pleasure, new things to do and achieve. We don't like being told what is 'right' and 'wrong', 'good' and 'bad'. We don't like being told how to live our life and what to do with it, what our purpose or duties or responsibilities or roles are. We like to just be, and make our own individual rules and norms along the way.
We accept that science may not have all the asnwers, but then, neither does religion. We don't mix religion with culture, or race or nationality or politics. We recoginze the simple fact that friendship and love transcends the divisions that the oldies have established over thousands of years. We realise that blood relations are not the end all and be all of human existence. We know that sometimes friends are much more valuable and reliable than family ties. We see the stupidity and hypocrisy that established beliefs so starkly reflect. We accept that it's natural and okay to experiment and explore, be it with alcohol, drugs, relationships, or sex. We understand that there is a distinction between being 'good' and being 'religious'; they are not necessarily synonymous. We vouch for freedom and independence of one and all, regardless of color, caste, sexuality, anything. We push for change. We rebel.
So naturally, we are too modern, too free-spirited, too open minded.
Yes, we are. So what's wrong with that, I ask?
Aren't we better? Won't our ways make the world a BETTER place, where there will be no discrimination, no prejudice, no force to do anything you don't want to, no need to lie or hide or sneak around? Our ways promote peace. We unite, rather than divide. We have fun, we live it up. We 'make love, not war.'
The only reason we are "too lonely", "too rowdy", and all the other seemingly negative things is because we are too f**king fed up with the world of the oldies and its archaic, confusing, conflicting ways. We are fed up of following rules and being told what to do, how to pray, where to go, what to study, what to wear, whom to date, whom to marry, when to marry, etc. etc. We are a stressed out generation because we want change but face invincible resistance. We are told we don't care, but perhaps it's the opposite and we just care too much. We are messed up because we don't know what to do to make the oldies happy and simultaneously keep ourselves happy. We are frustrated, pressurized, and conflicted. We need help. Yes, we need the help of the oldies. Please, for once, support us, and we will change the world. We will solve even the biggest of problems that humanity faces today. We will persevere, and we will survive.
In the words of President Obama, 'Yes, we can'
But only if you quit the name-calling, and let go of your goddamn rigid ways to just accept that we, the youth, have a solid point to make, as well as an agenda.
We are trying to be the change we wish to see in the world, as Gandhi said, and change is inevitable. So why don't you just sit back and accept us? Give us a chance. Have faith in us. Get off our backs and just let us be; let us do things our way. It's not our fault that we were born on the eve of a scientific and technological revolution that has transformed the world from what you knew it into something that seems threatening, daunting, incomprehensible. Surely, we appear doomed, but I think there is still time. There is still hope for salvation. If only you shut off the negative energy and give us reason to live, give us reason to dream, give us reason to prosper.
And then, we might just emerge as the generation that can be labelled more positively:"too good, too practical, too smart, too sensible, too responsible." We might just emerge as the generation that saved the world.
Amen to that!
And this: 
Oh, and this too:
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