Millennials are known for being the generation of instant gratification. Generation Y is the type that becomes Instagram famous and gets a dozen dates in half an hour of being on Tinder. We don’t like it when the world around moves at a slow pace and our goal is to see and experience as much as possible in the most immediate time frame. We are the generation who doesn’t save up to travel once every couple of years, we are the type who spends their last penny on a hostel and we never regret it.
Being an old soul, I hate this whole idea of instant gratification. I hate the fact that the most important aspect of dating someone is for the relationship to be convenient. If there is no instant connection it’s easy to move on to the next person within minutes or even seconds. Our soulmates could be slipping away through our fingers just because we were not able to connect with them within a couple of moments. The possibility of having multiple dates has spoiled us. We no longer want to put in the time and effort in order to really get to know someone. As the radius of our Tinder searches is within a 30-minute drive, we are missing out the real meaning of finding a soul mate. The fact that it’s so easy to replace anyone has made it redundant to fight for a relationship. If someone doesn’t like something about their partner, they don’t compromise anymore. Every little fight turns into a breakup, and every altercation ends up causing a split because no one wants to deal with difficulties. It makes me sad to think that making a connection is not about being yourself, but about being a more fun and captivating version of yourself, someone who has to stand out from the crowd. And if you are not this perfect version, it’s easy to find a replacement.
We don’t want to wait for others to take the time to respond to our messages; we want a response right away. We are the generation who checks when the other person was online to know exactly what they were doing. I have heard so many people complaining how they were ignored by someone else just because they saw that the person was online but had not responded to their message. This gets us worked up and we overreact. In this sense, it really is better not to know some things. It feels like we need to have instant access to others when in reality we don’t even bother picking up the phone and calling anymore. We are an oxymoron generation in that sense.
We are not the generation who will be at one job for the next 20 years, sitting in the same office, working with the same people. I personally get anxious just thinking about staying at the same job for more than five years, going to the same place day in and day out. We are the generation who thinks that we don’t live to work; we need something more from this world because we know that there is something more out there. We think that finding the meaning of life should not take decades and that it is an instant process. And if we haven’t found it by 30 then we are failures. Finding yourself takes time, it is a trial and error process, but the fact that we have all heard too many success stories puts a strain on us.
In this fast-paced world, it is easy to get caught up in the whole cycle of instant gratification that we are all craving for. It seems that life is too short to waste on irrelevant things, but what is really irrelevant? We get caught up in things that are forced to be important to us. Someone made a checklist for us, and we want to check off as fast as possible. We need to find a soulmate, we need to find a good paying job, and we need to see the world all before our thirtieth birthday. It’s time to really get our priorities straight, sometimes taking our time and not looking for a convenient way out might just be the best option out there.
Featured image via Spenser Sembrat on Unsplash
