I have read somewhere that walking actually helps to clear out stuff from our minds and will help us to think correctly or at least will allow us to escape from our problems at least for a while. I didn’t believe it for a long time because the word ‘walking’ itself sounds ‘tiring’ to me. So I have always chosen to stay at home rather than walk. But after pushing myself way too hard I finally decided to walk. Guess which song I decided to play to keep me company, Generation Why- Conan Gray.

I started walking enjoying Conan’s voice in my ears. I don’t know whether it's the effect of the lyrics or what, my brain just decided to think a little too much at that moment. My first thought was why is our generation even called ‘Gen Z’? Like are people really feel proud and calling us by that name? Or are they really pissed off by the way things are with us, and calling that name sarcastically? You know the most common dialogue I have heard from the elders around me, “This generation of kids don’t know how to live life” or something like “Things weren’t like this in our generation". And some people actually appreciate the way our generation is, and it goes like “If I had all these in my generation things would have been much better”. So my question is, what is the thing that our generation is so privileged to have that other generation never had? Well, the technology of course, and what else? Don’t even think about ‘freedom’, though for argument's sake we can tell that our generation is enjoying too much freedom while compared with our previous gens. But unfortunately, there are still people who are actually not enjoying much freedom in our generation as well. Even if we go by the majority, freedom cannot be considered. So what else? Yeah, our way of thinking. That is actually a good point. Like our generation, we are a lot more open-minded than our previous gens. We actually have the mindset to embrace new changes, accept differences, and understand opinions. That’s the only thing that I actually find different in our generation.

Though people call us ‘Gen Z’ or the high-tech generation, we really don’t get to enjoy the privilege of being one. To be honest I feel like our generation is the most messed up one. Like we can find all shades of dramatic people in our generation- the rebels, lesbians, gays, trans, introverts, extroverts, ambiverts, and a lot more. The best part is we just accept everyone just the way they are. But to be honest, we, whom you people call ‘Gen Z kids’ actually don’t know what the hell we are doing with our lives. Just because we have too much privilege, doesn’t mean we enjoy it or we know what to do with it.

At least the people before our gen knew what they want to do with life, or at least they adjusted themselves to live life. But look at our generation, our basic sleep schedule is so fucked up, like most of our day starts during the night, and our mind starts working while others are sleeping. We just do things for the sake of doing them. We just do things to make our parents(or others) happy and end up hating ourselves in the process. We don’t have dreams or ambition or passion or anything that drives us. Even if we have one, we might have to sacrifice, for the sake of our family. We always look for someone else to motivate us, ‘cause we no longer have the ability to push ourselves. Our generation not only have all shades of dramatic people, but we also have all shades of mental issues like depression, anxiety, insecurity, and a lot more phobias. And the reason for all this is the mobile phone as per “our parents”. Like, seriously? They could have come up with a better reason. The things we find important and interesting are labeled as “useless” or “waste of money” by our parents. We want to explore life and enjoy every bit of it, but we are always taught to do something only if we gain anything (basically monetary benefits) from them. Our new ideas and creativity are always answered with “it doesn’t work like that in reality”. Each one of us wants to be a lion, but we always end up being sheep. Yeah, we have many doors of opportunity open for us, but the more we go closer we realize that the doors are not actually open but just closed with a transparent glass door.

We have way too many options to choose from but don’t know what to choose. The people who have dreams don’t have the means to achieve them and people who have means don’t have any dreams to chase for. Half of the day goes into convincing our parents why we don’t want it and the other half goes into convincing ourselves why is it important to take the job. The sleepless nights where we scroll Instagram only to torture ourselves after realizing the kids our age are doing far better than us and why are we not doing anything. There is no point in having way too many options when we don’t even know what the hell to do with them. No need to mention the ‘what-if’ thoughts which scare us. Because we are always held back by the thoughts and beliefs that the previous generation has left for us.

When Conan Gray said,

“'Cause we are the helpless, selfish, one of a kind
Millennium kids, who all wanna die
Walking in the street with no light inside our eyes
We are worthless, cursed with too much time
We get into trouble and lose our minds
It's something that I've heard a million times in my life
Generation Why”

I felt it. 

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