The Loser Generation

Lie down please

I am a huge fan of Brené Brown. Who isn’t!

However, when I replayed her insanely popular TED talk on vulnerability, I couldn’t help but flinch at the way she describes herself. Here are some words that stood out to me:

“And so you have to understand that I have a bachelor’s and a master’s in social work, and I was getting my Ph.D. in social work, so my entire academic career was surrounded by people who kind of believed in the “life’s messy, love it.” And I’m more of the, “life’s messy, clean it up, organize it and put it into a bento box.”

“So I wrote at the top of the manila folder, and I started looking at the data. In fact, I did it first in a four-day, very intensive data analysis, where I went back, pulled the interviews, the stories, pulled the incidents. What’s the theme? What’s the pattern? My husband left town with the kids because I always go into this Jackson Pollock crazy thing, where I’m just writing and in my researcher mode.”

By the end of the talk, in addition to the crux of the talk, which is about vulnerability, you also take away ideas on how great, and hardworking, and science-y, and unmessy Brené Brown is.

Manila folders, sharpies, hundreds of hours, science, PhD, scientist, researcher.

I understand that establishing your credibility as a woman is incredibly hard in this world, and for social work to be taken seriously as a legitimate field of scientific research. But, it felt like she was trying too hard to prove that her insights were backed by hours of research and scientific rigor and hard, hard work. Again, I absolutely adore Brené Brown and think she is all kinds of wonderful, and have read all her books. This isn’t about her.

This is about how older successful Americans seem to spend way too much time trying to reinforce how successful, intelligent, hardworking, and quirky they are — how organized and diligent. Meanwhile, my generation (the dreaded millennials and even gen z-ers) just wants to lie down and give up.

We are tired of pursuing success, and education, and brilliance, because none of that s*it matters to us in a world where we develop chronic back pain due to bad posture in our 20s and 30s, have jobs that are so bad that they push us to binge-watch Netflix, and doomscroll Instagram, while we continue to live on a dying planet enduring what seems like a perpetual pandemic.

The pursuit of success has left us feeling exhausted and empty. The American dream that Brené Brown seems to have bought into, simply doesn’t work for us. We just don’t care about this story that you are peddling: work really hard, go to college, write books to become a multi-millionaire.

Just. stop.

We are all going to die on this overheating planet, due our constantly on-the-go, never stopping lifestyles. This country is about constant consumption and constant growth, and doesn’t consider the fact that uncontrolled growth in nature actually just means cancer.

What my generation cares about is softness. Slowing down. The recognition that we are enough, just like the trees and flowers are enough, even if they just are, and don’t always “do”. They help by just being themselves. We have finally stopped trying to “improve” ourselves, because we realize that we are unique and wonderful in ourselves — which seems radical to the boomers. That’s right: we choose healing over improving. You may call us snowflakes, but we all are! You are too. Put down that self-improvement book, and look at yourself — you are perfect.

I am actually too tired to even look up the facts and figures to substantiate this article. I don’t know if Pew Research shows that millennials are the most burned out generation, or where exactly millennials end and gen z begins. All I know that my friends and family in their 20s and 30s just want to lie. the fuck. down. Take a nap. Walk in the park. Buy less. Slow down.

We want to quit our jobs, and give up on having children. Many of us don’t believe in marriage. We are too deeply buried in debt and bogged down by uncertainty to care about how quirky you are with your perfect manila folders, and super scientific research methods, and the myth of hard work leading to success.

Just, stop.

Let us sip our Starbucks drink in silence while we procrastinate, contemplate quitting our jobs, being absolutely mediocre, and completely okay with it.