They’ve begun to label us. We, Generation Y, have been branded things like the rebellious generation, the “Me” generation, and the “Selfie” generation. The generation that can’t love because we want instant results and love takes work and time. We have endless information at our fingertips, but it’s like we are starved of any real knowledge. We really are not that rebellious if you look into it. We’re just us. We are “rebellious” because we are trying to figure out who the crap we really are.
And for some reason that’s seen as a bad thing. Shouldn’t life be about figuring out who you are as a person? So what if we are figure it out differently now than we did before? Why is that such a bad thing?
Our current dating culture is considered, by our older counterparts, to be one of our bigger “problems” at the moment. It’s a hook-up culture; therefore, it has a negative connotation. But what if our generation doesn’t really have a screwed up sense of love, just a different one?
We don’t sit around and wait for life or for anyone to tell us who we are; we go out and figure it out for ourselves. We try new food and music. We want to experience as much of the world as we can. We live to travel and see new things because it’s exciting and new. I think we are the first generation to actually want to embrace all the world has to offer and accept that change is inevitable. We go and get what we want.
This also means we don’t sit around and wait for love any more. We are constantly moving forward. At any point in our lives, we pretty much have the ability to walk away. We give ourselves that freedom and we make sure of it. Because we have now have the option to leave at any time, it means so much more when we stay. At some point, you have probably been invested and it probably would hurt a ton if you just leave, but the option is always there.
This is a time and place where women can have lives without having a guy around. Meaning, we don’t need them in our lives to be happy. When we stay in a relationship, it’s not because we have to anymore. We could very easily go find another guy to test out if we really wanted to. When we stay, it means we can’t picture leaving. We know how to love; we just show it differently. When we love, we stay.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you we don’t have a flawed system for dating and that hook-up culture is one of the best things that has every happened because it’s really not. It is pretty screwed up, but when is anything related to dating not messy? It has its flaws (lets us avoid commitment, allows us to avoid our real feelings) but so did a lot of the other ways of dating. At least ours gives us the freedom to figure out who we are without a guy to label us “His.”
Maybe we are just a messy generation. Or maybe we are just the first generation that is tired of the unrealistically high expectations everyone seems to be pretending to live up to. We are who we are whether you like it or not. If being real is wrong and makes us rebellious or self-absorbed, thenI don’t want to be right.
Featured image via Unsplash
