talking 'bout my generation

I was reading an article today about millennials “adapting” the idea of the dinner party, and although I did not find the article in itself offensive, I do find any article outlining what the millennial generation has done or not done absolutely and utterly exhausting.

The author of the article looks young and hip according to my quick google search, but I cannot help but be frustrated with reporting like this. Essentially, the article outlines the fact that we millennials do not have a dinner party like those of yesteryear - we host potluck gatherings where everyone sits on the floor because we all have tiny apartments without proper seating. She said that the dinner parties of an earlier era were all about the status symbol - having a gorgeous home to entertain in and the funds to fill those gorgeous tables with food and alcohol.

Both of these facts seem correct - today is the era of student debt and apartment dwelling and the time before is regarded as simpler and more secure. But is this something we must continue to compare? Do we really need to dissect every possible thing that we are doing today and compare it to what our parents and grandparents were doing in the past? The fact of the matter is, many of us are living in apartments, we aren’t working at the same company for our entire lives, and we are struggling with mountains of debt. But think about how advanced our society has become just in the last twenty years. Our parents and grandparents did not have to allot money for cell phones, computers, wifi - all things that are of vital importance now. There were fewer things to keep up with in terms of technology, but the people of the past had a whole separate list of issues to deal with - war, the Red Scare, rampant racism, full-blown sexism, propaganda, the AIDS crisis - the list goes on. These are all challenges and they are what have shaped the generations - but not all challenges are created equal.

In my mind, it is impossible to compare myself to my mother when she was my age, and even more unfathomable to compare myself to my grandmother when she was my age. When my mom was 29 she was a mother of one, working a full-time job with a husband that traveled most of the week. She was a salesperson selling the very first cellphones on the market. At that point in her life she had already been married, owned three different homes in two different states and at that point was pregnant with her second child. My life looks nothing like that - I have owned zero homes, I have zero babies, and I will be getting married next year after I have turned 30. I’ve had a cellphone since I was fourteen years old. Everything is totally different. So why must we constantly compare ourselves to an older generation?

I understand the basic need to look at history and see where we are now, to measure societal changes, but for me, it is almost demoralizing to see that my generation is crumbling everything that came before us. My generation isn’t buying homes, we aren’t buying diamonds, we are living with our parents after we graduate, we are waiting until after thirty to get married and have children, some of us are choosing not to have children at all. My generation has been charged with the death of industries that did so well in earlier times, like that of the tuna can.

It’s demoralizing to be constantly told that my generation is making the wrong choices, that we are prioritizing avocado toast over long term investments. To me, it seems like we should respect and be aware of what has happened in the past, but not let that hang over our heads while building our future. Yes, millennials are doing things differently, but that is only because we are living in a different time. Instead of looking at ourselves through the lens of our parent’s and grandparent’s ideals, we should be focusing on the problems at hand - something I think my generation is great at doing.

In this era of time, we are making true change. We are calling out sexism in the workplace, we are calling out racism and the disparity in the criminal justice system, we are making room to be inclusive to all humans of all identities, we are trying to save our planet from destruction due to corporate greed. Yes, we have a long road ahead of us and there is so much room for improvement, but the fact of the matter is we do care, and we are engaging with the issues that matter to us. This is a mindset to celebrate and to continue to move forward to a better and brighter future - hopefully, a future where we are not constantly comparing our lives to the lives of our children and grandchildren that we may or may not be having (wink!).

PS this is a photo from yesterday - Noah and I ended up hosting dinner at our house last night, and let me tell you - we dinner partied the heck out of it! He pulled together a chip and dip platter that everyone was overjoyed to see and then made gorgeous grilled pizzas for our party of 6. We ate dinner on our patio around the wrought iron table that we inherited from my parents (that we spray painted to make our own )and then we finished the night with s’mores over the open fire (pit).

How’s that for entertaining?? I wish I had taken pictures of the lovely evening we had, but I guess I was simply living in the moment. The picture above is before we went to the grocery store, so it feels appropriate to share. Also, go Panthers.