Millennials Are Us

J sent me this sobering article first thing in the morning. I didn't get to it till later. Wah. This is a rather contemplative read. Nothing obscure, but ouch. 

The commentary doesn't fully resonate with me; some parts do. On our little red dot, we've been debating a lot about housing, if it's inclusive enough, and if it's affordable. More importantly, if millennials feel suffocated, this is beyond a personal mid-life crisis. To be honest, that's like a 'crisis' that can happen anytime when we lose faith in what we do, how we live and how we spend time to mark the years. 

Jessica Grose wrote how this isn't what middle age is supposed to look like for millennials. The opinion piece is titled, "Millennials Are Hitting Middle Age — and it doesn't look like what we were promised", published in The New York Times on March 14, 2023. This is US-centric. The premises and interviewees are US-based, white and educated. The statistics are insufficient and it makes a sweeping statement, but it paints an incomplete but not an untrue picture. 

The COVID-19 pandemic and its global lockdowns and fallouts have upended many jobs, lives and families across the globe. The economic fallout of Silicon Valley banks, over-hiring in tech, overhype of cryptocurrency have all resulted in many people struggling to make ends meet. People who were typically defined as middle-class have fallen off that tier. Also, this,

Things have been difficult for her family, she said, but one thing she isn’t worried about: a midlife crisis just over the horizon. “My whole adult life has been one long crisis,” she said. “Career crises, education debt, watching my I.R.A. lose a quarter to half of its value a couple of times, child care expenses, fraying social fabric, wage pressures and, above all, insecurity. I am a professional married to a professional, but our jobs can go up in smoke at the drop of a hat. We can’t rely on anything but ourselves and can only hold out hope that we won’t eat cat food once our bodies break down and we are forced into impoverished retirement.” She said she knows that sounds dramatic, but it’s how she really feels. Amid all this, who’s got time to worry about whether they’re feeling fulfilled?

For many people, middle age is the period of 'peak survival mode'. If we lose our jobs, we lose everything. Even if we have funds from the family, if the family business collapses, we're screwed too. Worse if you have children to raise and keep alive. Millennials feel like a fraud. Imposter-syndrome is real. People do this adulting thing and don't feel like they're in control. Yet many are having babies and educating them, and grappling with outstanding student loans, home loans and whatever mortgages and debts they're bearing in order to keep life on am even keel. 

I'm really not interested in adulting. More importantly, I'm selfish enough, and I'm mean enough to say NO to many people. I don't build complex relationships. I don't allow 'family' and its extended relationships be a focal point in my life because I don't share or subscribe to the attitudes, values and character traits of these 'family members'; I don't like them very much. Being with 'family' might give some people joy and it's their safe space. But for me, the connotation of 'family' doesn't give me breathing space. I always step away from everything toxic.

In “Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life,” a best-selling chronicle of adulthood published in the mid-1970s, the journalist Gail Sheehy described how a typical life trajectory played out for her generation (she was born in 1936): People got married young, started having kids in their 20s and developing careers and then were comfortably ensconced by their mid-30s. She described the ages from 35 to 45 as “the deadline decade,” when “the man of 40 usually feels stale, restless, burdened and unappreciated. He worries about his health. He wonders, ‘Is this all there is?’”

But this version of midlife, as depicted in the novels and films “Revolutionary Road” and “The Ice Storm,” hasn’t jibed with the reality of many American adults for a long time, even though its familiar beats have lingered in pop culture. When the film “This Is 40” attempted to update the midlife crisis motif for the disaffected Gen X middle class in 2012, many reviewers did not find the protagonists’ financially cushy malaise relatable. More recently, “Fleishman Is in Trouble” considered the crisis from the perspective of elite New Yorkers, and though it was laced with real pathos, it faced some of the same criticism.  

And for those reaching their 40s now, this story of midlife feels less recognizable than ever.

How do you feel about all these? Most of my peers are well, at this age. Middle age. Or hitting 40 very soon. We all have our troubles and headaches to contend with. The effort expended to resolve them might be similar though, and the angst wrought would be complicated. 

This has been said over and over again, that we are the sandwiched generation between the baby boomers and babies. Millennials are the hardest hit in this economic fallout for the now. BUT, isn't awareness only for the past 100 years? None of us were alive before that, and none of us will be after. So our generational pain is really for this generation, or rather, this century.