Rant from a Millennial

I’m tired of all this complaining about millennials. Maybe I’m just surrounded by great people from my generation (and I am) but I don’t know any of these complaining millennials everyone complains about expecting everything to be given to them. I know they exist but every generation has these types of people. The people I do know and the things I do see and hear constantly are people in older generations constantly doing the complaining. They’re the ones writing the articles and blogs and they are the talking heads on TV and radio that complain and moan.

It’s all a circle. The older generations complain that the younger generations aren’t exactly like them so something’s wrong. I read an article about how people are not happy with a statue put up in our town of two young girls taking a selfie. Among other statues the point is to have statues that reflect what normally happens in that area of town, Town Center. One lady commented “This is why we hate the younger generation.” Wow, strong words! Hate?  I think the amount that people are bothered by this statue is more of a reflection on some of the people in the community and not on the statue. Once someone leaves one age group they forget they were probably the same way and have a down casting eye instead of an eye and heart that says, “Let me lead them to something greater.” I  know people my age who have done this, they are older now and complain about the younger, as if things/they have changed that much.

(I just read in a biography on J. R. R. Tolkien that he recalls a memory while being sick with pneumonia and his grandfather was staying with them. He remembers him, " standing by my bedside, a tall thin black-clad figure, and looking at me and speaking to me in contempt-to the effect that I and my generation were degenerate weaklings." This was in 1923.)

I don’t think people stop and realize that SOMEONE raised the younger generation, and someone else raised the generation that is currently raising the young. And that someone, naturally, is the older generation doing the complaining. Things don’t just happen. It was the older generations that decided to stop having family meals. It was the older generation that decided to put sports, extracurricular activities, and school above faith and family. It was the older generation that decided to enact no fault divorce that started the divorce trend that is ravaging the western world (before you get sensitive I’m not saying all divorces are the same)(In my philosophy class my professor presented us with a study that showed the top 5 worse things that could happen to a person. Divorce was in that top 5 because of how far reaching and lasting the effects of it is). The younger generation is not the one that decided for themselves that they move too much and have too much energy for the older generation to try and have patience with and learn to work with and decided to put themselves on drugs that dull their senses and turn them into zombies thus starting the abuse of such drugs. It is the older generation that has so corrupted our economy that there is a lack of well-paying jobs and our cost of living is so high that so many millennials are living at home. It’s not the youth who are deciding that they need to be in all honors and AP classes even though they aren’t equipped for it, multiple sports and clubs and then end up with busted bodies by time they graduate and depressed and even suicidal deciding to cope with cutting and prescription drug use from their parent’s cabinets or the doctors they’re sent to. It’s not the youth who have made the porn industry so successful to gross more money than the NFL, MLB, and NBA combined, in turn encouraging the pornification of every other entertainment medium.

Our country did not end up the way it is over night. The younger generations are not the way they are on accident. As St. John Paul II said in a homily back in 1986, “As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the world in which we live.” We all know it. I’ve met so many parents that complain about competition in schools, sports, band, etc, yet they continue to succumb to it and form their lives around those things. They complain about how they never see their kids, everyone is so busy, they miss so much church. Parents wonder why their kids are depressed and they have no idea why. No one knows what is going on in the other family members’ hearts and minds.

At our final Confirmation night I invited parents. Some came. I challenged the teens to really think about what the sacrament is about (being more closely bound to the Church, strengthened by the Spirit, and are more strongly obligated to spread and defend the faith with their actions and words). Then I challenged the parents by reminding them what they promised they’d do at their child’s Baptism (raise them in the faith). I asked them if that has been happening. If so, great. If not, it’s time to start because they are not done raising their kids in the faith until…well they are never done. Hopefully if they are in heaven they’ll continue praying for their children. I closed by having the families not just pray with each other but by praying OVER each other. They were to share something real about what they need prayer for and take turns praying over each other. The majority had never done this and this was uncomfortable and challenging.

Stop all the complaining and take responsibility for your family. Families are what will make real change. But what do I know. I’m just a complaining millennial. 

Check out:

The Importance of Family Dinners

St. John Bosco's Ten Tips for Helping Our Youth