We’re Too Young To Be So Sad
The characteristic negative changes in today’s society and economy are causing grief among the young generation. Everyone is influenced by broader social and economic trends, but how this actually happens is often difficult to observe in our daily lives. Before the economic crisis of a few years ago, we still had the hope that our generation would not have to wait years for the weather to get better. Now we see that this was too optimistic and yet we continue in the same way.
The title of this article went viral on social networks. The statement comes from an illustration by Sara Herranz. The author got the idea for the illustration while watching the movie Beginners and she decided to include it in her book Everything I Never Told You Is Kept Here.
Thousands of young people identify with the image ; people who are healthy and who lack no basic needs, but who have seen their future turn 180 degrees. Their academic and personal ambitions have changed and for many it will be much more difficult to achieve a goal that was once taken for granted: leaving home.
Yet we are too young to be so sad. Every day we may experience different emotions and during the week we may experience both sad and happy moments, but in general today’s young people are desperate when it comes to their future.
Despair is one of the main triggers of depression. Compared to the previous generation, there is an increase of about 15 or 20% in cases of depression among the youth of today .
Many young people see that after years of studying they end up with jobs that have nothing to do with their studies. Others have to emigrate, but when they do so often come to the conclusion that they also have to take jobs in the new country that are not related to their education. No one is ever prepared for this situation, which means they have to lay claim to their own personal resources in just a short period of time to survive these stressful, overwhelming situations day in and day out.
So it only makes sense that we no longer put the blame on the young and accept that the best-educated generation falls short here. In reality, the situation has changed drastically in a very short time.
We must learn about everything that happens to us
This dire economic situation does not affect people who already have stable jobs and a proven track record in the same way as they do people who are just entering the wide world for the first time and find nothing but slamming doors.
You have not proved yourself, because you simply had no opportunity to do so. You have to swim against the current, disoriented. But thanks to everything that’s happening, you’ll learn lessons that you wouldn’t even learn in three lifetimes.
When we are sad, we should also think about what we gain and what we lose. More important than anything else, we learn about everything that happens around us. We will develop a unique sense of empathy and social awareness that will allow us to analyze the problems of the world from many different perspectives. Our resilience has developed at lightning speed, our emotional intelligence has saved us from more situations than anything we’ve learned in previous years.
We have become more open, less naive and more supportive. We value honesty, simplicity and decency in a way that few previous generations did. We regard hypocrisy as our enemy, as do vanity and extravagance.
We are prepared for the change and we will make things better. Maybe our psychological resistance will break every now and then, but we will rise again. We’re too young to be sad, so we get up and keep going.
We are sad, but we are not alone
When you are the only one going through depressive or desperate situations you might feel scared and ashamed, but in this situation we can tolerate the sadness because we are part of a whole network of people going through the same thing.
We cannot relax because the situation is generally chaotic, but there is also a psychological phenomenon: guilt becomes more and more bearable and spreads more and more, because we no longer attribute the situation to personal faults or traits. Instead, we realize it’s a shared responsibility.
Do not isolate yourself if you are in this situation because all you are doing is passively and catastrophically confronting the situation and this will not help you. Get yourself together, get dressed and go outside even if you don’t feel like it. The desire to do this will come naturally. The opportunity to take your life back into your own hands is beyond that. As Jean Paul Sartre once said, “We can’t waste time. Maybe there were better people, but this is ours.”
