Jessica Grose writes an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled:
“Millennials are hitting middle age — and it doesn’t look like what we were promised.”
Promised?
What exactly were millennials promised?
Also, who made these promises?
When and how were these promises made?
Perhaps Jessica Grose has confused the concept of promises with something more akin to “hopes and dreams.” Possessing hope for a bright tomorrow strikes me as perfectly reasonable. Chasing a dream is highly recommended, at least in my opinion.
But promises about the future?
As far as I know, that is not a thing.
Perhaps Grose is writing about assumptions made by certain millennials, which, if true, would be unfortunate. We all know what happens when one makes assumptions.
Or maybe, tragically, she’s writing about expectations. Expectations are fine when they pertain to things like ordering a Cobb salad or purchasing a new refrigerator.
But expectations about the future?
That is a fool’s game.
Tell my father and the tens of thousands of other men who were drafted to fight in Vietnam about promises for the future.
Tell my grandfathers, who both fought in World War II, about promises.
Tell my great-grandfather, who fought in World War I, about promises.
Tell the widows of the men who fought alongside these men about promises for the future.
I could go on. Endlessly so, as I’m sure you can imagine. Large swaths of people whose plans for the future were diverted or altered or prematurely ended by world events, natural disasters, political chicanery, economic upheaval, and more.
There are no promises in life. No guarantees. Your fate is born from a combination of things, including personal circumstances, the choices you make, the effort you put forth, the conditions of the world over the course of your lifetime, and stupid, blind luck.
Many more, too. Too many factors to know or count.
Your future is a combination of things you can absolutely control and things you have absolutely no control over at all. A melange of personal engineering and chance fate.
But promises?
Give me a break.
I suspect that many, and perhaps most, millennials already know all this and that Jessica Grose is only speaking for a certain type of millennial:
The ones I try to avoid.
