You might have an idea of what I’m going to talk about from the title of this piece, but I promise you it’s not going to be another cliché’ article. It’s not going to be about how the X, Y, Z or even A, B, C generations are lazy and have no motivation or about how we’re never willing to put in the effort. Instead, I’m going to talk about why we’re scared to be ourselves, to go out of our comfort zone, to engage in meaningful conversation, to open up to people and to really go after what we want. We are scared for a number of reasons, and trust me, I’m not exempt from this fear.
We hate to see ourselves fail.
It seems like there is a never ending pressure put on us from hourless amounts of homework to the impending doom of trying to be qualified enough to actually get a job once we graduate. With all of the new technology, new required skills we should hold and the competing candidates who have the same degree and same GPA as us, it’s hard to not be hard on ourselves. It’s not that we don’t try or are too scared to, but we are terrified of failure because it seems like it’s looming around every corner.
We are expected to be better in every aspect.
We are scared of not being good enough, of not being smart enough, skinny enough, pretty enough, manly enough: whatever it may be. The media creates a stigma that we need to be tall and beautiful and skinny for boys to like us or for us to be able to nail a catch (and by nail I mean tie down). As far as guys, they are expected to be the head of the household, able to support a family, have what is to be considered a manly aura and have no problem with being able to please a girl. There is a lot of expectations and pressures that are reinforced by friends, peers, social media, technology and mass production of products, services and goods and television commercials that goad young adults to be bigger, better faster and stronger like we are an item and not a human being.
We’ve seen a lot of tragedy.
From the faint remembrance of 9/11 to terrorist attacks, the Iraq War, the economic fall and rise, racial inequality, social injustice and the reminder that most marriages end in divorce and that death is evident: we know what sadness and fear looks like. We’ve seen our parents split up, we’ve seen relationships end due to infidelity, we don’t know how to open up to other people because we know we are going to be the ones that are hurt in the end. It’s hard to have faith when we see things ending all around us and that is why we are so scared to show how we really feel and remember that even though all of these bad things do happen, there is still hope.
We don’t understand the concept of commitment.
Whether we have ever been in a relationship or not, commitment is not something that is expected in this day and age. Maybe it’s because 50% of marriages end in divorce or people are getting married at a much later age now, but committing to one person seems like a feat instead of a privilege. Your 20s should be about finding yourself and focusing on what you want to do with your life, but if we don’t even give people the chance to get to know us in a vulnerable state, we may never find the person we were meant to fall in love with or even marry.
All in all, our generation has a reason to be scared, but there are so many things that we have accomplished in the years that we’ve been alive. We are engaged in the world and we know what we want. We don’t need to be scared to live and to put our all into the life that we were given: whether it be by working our asses off to earn our dream job, opening up to our significant other even if it may not work out in the long run, being our true selves no matter what others think or even accepting that we are perfect just the way we are.