I have come to the belief that we, as a society, have the “could’ve would’ve should’ve” mentality or the “it was better when” mentality. This mentality doesn’t just apply to senior citizens sitting playing card games on their front porch. People in their 20s are in this general malaise-believing that society, the government, the economy, or any number of outside forces control what they are doing and their future. The government and the media don’t help at all by discussing how the national debt is “risking the future of our children.” In turn, saying to young people in America that the reason you don’t have a job, or the world isn’t going the way you want it, is because of some outside force.
The economy sucks. It feels like our civil liberties have been more and more encroached upon after 9/11 and more and more changes are happening to society that makes people want to look back at the “good life” of the 1960s and 1970s. But, as somebody who has studied history would know, the majority of people living in that time we’re looking back at an easier more moral time. Every generation believes that the generation before had it easier because they either survived it and look back at it with rose-tinted glasses or you didn’t live through it and think that the movies were cool. Every generation prior to this one has had to deal with sweeping economic and social changes that caused a large moral backlash. This one feels stronger because we are living through it. I am not ranking any generation as better or worse. What I am saying is look at the present and live. There are opportunities everywhere, you just have to have the want to try and move outside your comfort zone.
