Languishing Toward Our Next Victory
At 4:17 a.m. I sit awake tapping away on my laptop, occasionally glancing up at a documentary I found about millennials who did whatever it took, no matter how illegal, to gain fame and power. I began to reflect on what it takes for millennials to make it in this world, this economy, this atmosphere full of inflation, debt, newfound awareness, and fear. The intimidation that I had been feeling for the past three months again raised its ugly head inside my belly. My belly, bloated, full of the junk food I had been filling it with as a result of the anxiety that seemed to be swallowing me whole.
I wondered what was next. When would I finally get an office job, which I had been applying for throughout the summer, which I believed would solidify the meaning of this seemingly endless college journey I had been going on for almost five years. The languishing I’d been doing between the homework, late submissions of my monthly articles, and delayed job application submissions led me here. Laying in a bed I never made, full of my cat’s hair and fast food crumbs, I thought, “what’s next?”
As I pondered and reflected on this question, and all those little events that led up to this point, I sighed. Still full of anxiety, some small part of me, again, concluded that everything was going to be okay.
We must remember that shit happens. We work hard, we mess up and miss deadlines, but all the hard work you have done still exists and counts for something. We must remember to acknowledge our accomplishments, even if the world hasn’t quite noticed us yet. Even if the world has been distracted by the economic devastation of COVID, or simply the high gas prices, we still exist. Our hard work still matters and will lead us to the exact spot we were always inevitably meant to be in.
Yet, we also must remember to take accountability for the mistakes that we have made. If we acknowledge these mistakes, we can get better and move past them. We can become the people that we dream of becoming. All the set-backs seem to weigh heavily on the backs of us all, but let’s take a second to reflect on how it weighs on the backs of millennials.
Though we are not, just as we are like, babies. This economy is new to us, the responsibility is new to us, and the ups and downs that come with life are new to us. Grappling with the news and the super speed that it comes at us is simply scary, terrifying even. To new eyes, the state of the world is hard to accept and grapple with. But even harder is figuring out our place in it. Where do we fit, when we feel like that puzzle piece that’s been put in the wrong box and is being shoved into the crevice of the last hole in a just-about-finished puzzle?
This is a question I don’t quite have the answer to yet, but I guess all you really can do is….keep going.
At 26, I’m still young, but what I do know is that I’ve felt this languishing feeling before, and one of the things that helped me the most was continuing to keep going. I’ve been through many ups and downs but overall, I’ve overcome. Though I still have a long way to go, I can say I do have a few accomplishments. Those accomplishments came after many times of wanting to give up, failing again and again, sometimes giving up, walking away, and then trying again. Specifically, my college experience, driving, learning how to save, and even writing this article, all came with time, practice, and the ability to keep going.
Sometimes, when you get to your last, your last straw, your last dollar, or even your last hope, all you have is the ability to get up and keep going.
So, while we are a little bit past half of the year 2022, let’s rest, reset, and reflect…and most of all, keep going.