As we start maturing and having ideas of who we’ll be and what our future entails, many of us decide we want to be anything but our parents. That’s not to say that they’re not good enough, but they grew up differently in their generation and many of their beliefs and ideas that they accumulated have become outdated.
They also have our lives planned out from the career path we take to our life partner, raising us with the aim of fitting this mold they have created. So we grow up with the aim of destroying this mold and with the desire to grow up differently.
We grow up hoping to be free and to have the world to take on. We grow up with many aspirations and ideas of who we want to be and what we want to do, only to slowly discard them all to unconsciously become who our parents want us to be.
So the second you gain your freedom, you start to do everything your parents disapproved of, taking advantage of your newly found liberty until one day you catch yourself doing something and it hits you, “I am becoming my parents.”
Like any rebellious child, you may start viewing your parents as the enemy, as the villains in your story. The people who are putting a stop to your reckless ways and careless habits. But as soon as that rebelliousness is fulfilled and your vision is no longer foggy with disobedience, you come around to realize how lucky you are to have these two hardworking, inspiring individuals as your parents, regardless of the generation gap. You come to realize how much they sacrificed for you and how hard they worked to shield you from the dangerous world that lies ahead.
We also come to realize that their ‘outdated’ ideologies that we were so strongly against are the result of a messed-up society, one that enforces its ideas on those who live in it without giving them much of a choice to resist.
And instead of our initial plan to attack, we start to direct our anger elsewhere. More specifically, society, the economy, and all that falls in between. We start to hope for a better future for what’s left of our parents’ lives and for our future children.
We start to criticize and protest, and many norms are changing because of us. Much of the beliefs from previous generations that are followed mindlessly are being questioned because we refuse to just sit and take what is being fed to us. We are the pioneers of change.
Our generation is powerful and we are slowly coming to realize that power. With the world in the palm of our hands, especially with the internet and our smartphones, there’s almost nothing we can’t do.