Our Generation Needs Encouragement

I’ve noticed that the times I feel most alive is when I am responding back to people on Medium.

I’m just a regular 24-year-old guy on the Internet. I’m not particularly great at writing. I’m not particularly different than any other 24-year-old dudes in the world. In fact, I’m probably smack dab in the middle of the normal distribution.

I started writing online 3 years ago with the hope that maybe in the future, at least 100 people would read my writing and consider it useful.

The pieces that were painful to write were the ones that resonated with the most amount of people.

I wrote this piece when I finally reached 1000 followers — an event that I never expected to happen to me. This was truly the proudest achievement of my life — the fact that people wanted to read my articles and thought that I would have more valuable things to share filled me with happiness that I could not process until this very moment.

I wrote this piece when I was unemployed for 4 months after I graduated from college. When I wrote this, my confidence was at rock bottom and the story was a symbolic representation of me facing my shadow and learning to move forward with a positive mindset. This story is filled with clichés and typos and grammatical errors, but it is my most popular piece to this day.

What really broke my heart about the popularity of the aforementioned stories, along with these other pieces, is how many people resonated with the message.

The realization that many people living in our time have no encouragement in their lives is tragic. It’s almost like they have no expectations for themselves, and they don’t know what to do.

They read my stories and feel that, for the first time in a long time, they have been told that they CAN reach for something greater beyond, that they do have potential and can achieve what they set their mind to do if they put in the work.

People are searching for answers because they’re suffering. They’re going on Google and asking people on the Internet what the meaning of life is supposed to be. They’re asking people what they should do with their lives and what their personal values are supposed to be.

Some people have reached out to me personally through e-mail (which I always enjoy receiving and responding to, though I have not been the best pen pal) or have commented on my stories, sharing (mostly) kind words and sharing what they felt or learned through reading my stories.

There are some comments that usually do stick out to me. They’re the ones that seem like a cry for help — a person who has a story to tell but needs some encouragement to tell it. They’re the comments that I usually focus on, because I feel their desperation through their writing.

They are either suffering without knowing the reason why, or they are suffering but they don’t know how to get out of the situation. They were led to believe that their only option for help was to reach out to a stranger on the Internet, hoping that they might have the solution.

They share their intimate struggles, they tell me that they feel hopeless and depressed, they tell me that they feel trapped and need some guidance out of the pit that they are in.

What this tells me is that these suffering individuals do not believe that there is anyone around them who can bear the weight of their suffering.

They don’t feel like there is anyone around them who would sit down, truly listen to them without judging or imposing their opinions on them, and just sympathize with them.

They don’t feel like anyone is listening, and they are unable to get a source of motivation and encouragement in their lives.

With all that being said, the unfortunate truth does not change: I definitely do not have the solution.

I don’t know anything about the person’s life. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know what kind of unfortunate and sad things they’ve gone through life, and how those experiences shaped them to who they are today.

I don’t know anything about these people, so I am truly one of the worst people to come to when it comes to finding a solution.

But I find that taking an interest in these people’s lives and giving them words of encouragement, even just a little bit, will move them emotionally and help them have the confidence to tackle their problems one by one.

I ask questions about what they said. I tell those who share their stories with great details that they are great storytellers. I tell the young people who email me looking for advice that I started seeking out only 2 years ago that they are mature and wise beyond their years.

I encourage everyone to strive for greater things in life and I tell them that not only do they have potential, but also that they could reach for it and maybe even obtain it if they set a goal and work hard to achieve that goal.

I tell them what I really think, without an agenda, without trying to get something from them, and they feel good. And when I feel that I’ve helped them feel good, I feel good. So everyone wins in these scenarios.

Is Life About Being Happy?

I’ve also noticed that our generation grew up with a message of chasing after things that we love and that makes us happy. Life is about being as happy as much as you can and as often as you can. You only live once, so do whatever makes you happy and make sure you don’t regret anything.

It’s a great and positive message, but it is missing a key piece — it doesn’t separate the distinction between happiness and satisfaction. Happiness is fleeting, but a lot of people believe that it is a mental state that could be achieved permanently.

Then, to make matters worse, they link this belief with something in the external world. Materialistic things, as we’ve painfully found out over the past few decades, can only bring us happiness for a short amount of time. We forget that our fundamental mode of existence is suffering, and when the first sign of pain and nihilism (meaninglessness) pops into our heads, we try to forget it by delving more and more into materialistic things.

We end up in a toxic loop, where the more we try to rid of ourselves of the pain and suffering that is natural to humanity, the more we suffer when the temporary highs of our hedonistic lifestyle run out.

Then we feel like we have to do more drugs, drink more alcohol, have more sex, play endless hours of video games, watch mindless and endless entertainment, scroll through social media, or gain more power and money in order to rid ourselves of our suffering.

And it doesn’t help the fact that the society we live in encourages all these ways of living, because again, the fundamental existence for humans is supposed to be about happiness, right? We don’t have to really worry too much, because we’re all going to die in the end, so why not be as happy as possible?

But we’ve gone down that path, and we’re clearly not as happy as we were told we were going to be. So now people are looking for alternatives.

What’s the answer to the big question of life? What am I supposed to be doing here? Why do I exist? Why did I come into this world and why must I die? Why do we suffer and what is the solution to this suffering?

We realize that the meaning of life can’t simply be to have a happy life.

We realize that much of our lives are not under our control, so we are subjected to experiences that will always make us feel different kinds of emotions (usually, not the emotions we want to feel).

We realize that the things we believe will make us happy doesn’t really make us happy.

We realize that there aren’t many things in life that make you genuinely happy, and the only thing that makes these moments of happiness so special is that they are so rare.

If you were supposed to be happy all the time, are you truly happy? Or are you only able to be happy and appreciate the moments you are happy because you know what it feels like to be sad?

So we need to recalibrate — what should be the meaning of life, or at least what kind of philosophy gives you a life that is meaningful and makes your suffering worthwhile?

I have started to believe that it is personal responsibility that gives people a purpose in life.

To be continued in part two — “Our Generation Needs Responsibility”