Millennials, for the love of God, please stop sh***ing on Gen Z.

I already know what you're thinking. Who the hell is this girl, and is her whole life's purpose for teenagers to validate her on the internet? I swear that’s not it. I was not cool when I was a teenager, I have no delusions about being cool now.

Hear me out on this please, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way, but unfortunately it seems to be the way of the world that the ones who talk the loudest are often the most listened to.

Stop shitting on Gen Z.

And millennials I am looking at you specifically, because we should know better. We were the last generation to be constantly battered by unfair assumptions, and judged by the actions of a few.

Not to mention those random articles and "news reports" about us that were obviously just completely made up.

Shoutout to Gen X who somehow managed to slip out of the generational wars relatively unscathed.

We are Generation Y. Millennials. We know intimately how it feels to be misunderstood and constantly told we are the problem.

We were blamed for everything from a financial crisis that started before some of us were even legally old enough to work most places in the US, to instability in the housing market, which is funny, considering how few of us can afford to own property, or anything at all for that matter.

And now the latest and greatest, in my opinion. The Great Resignation.

This is our fault too. Because of course we're responsible. It's definitely our fault that people decided to quit their jobs after a worldwide pandemic. Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that the federal minimum wage in the US has remained stagnant since many of us entered the workforce, as costs are ever increasing and a literal world lockdown forced us all to face up to just how much we really hated our jobs. Yeah, no. It's our fault. Why not?

But then, just like that, all of the sudden the world began to shift and every day I hear more and more blame falling onto Gen Z. The older they get, the more every generation wants to make it about them and what they are doing wrong.

Millennials, lately it seems we are doing this the loudest and I'm sitting over here wondering what the actual hell do we think we are doing?

It's like we saw an out in this new generation, a chance to blame shift and get out from under the boomers and the media's thumb and we all collectively decided to jump at it.

Now all of the sudden I even hear millennials saying that people are quitting their jobs because they are lazy and don't know how to work. These young people today, eh?

Fellow millennials. Sorry to tell y'all, but we aren't that young anymore. You can adjust for what year you were born and when you got your first job, but it's safe to assume most of us have officially been in the workforce for at least a decade at this point.

It's no longer ire directed exclusively at us for walking away from our jobs, it's now also at the 22 year old, fresh out of college with boat loads of student debt who refuses to take an entry level job that pays less than $50,000 a year.

And you know what?

GOOD FOR THEM.

And yes I know. Many, maybe even most of us, could've only dreamed of a number like that when we entered the workforce but guess what? Times have changed and the attitude that I suffered and therefore everyone else must too, does that remind you of anything?

Doesn't it feel a bit how things were when we were young and every problem in the world was being branded as our fault and everything would be fine if we just sucked it up?

This is nothing new. Every generation has been blamed and every generation has done the blaming. It's the circle of life. (Now that song is going to be stuck in my head. The version that plays in the animated movie, obviously. The best version.)

It happens to every generation at some point and our time is now millennials. We are turning into our parents.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Maybe for once we can temporarily halt these generational wars and stand with the younger generation rather than willingly letting our lot in life become theirs too.

Remember when we were passionate and we were going to change the world?

We still can, starting here. Starting with listening to young voices with radical ideas and rather than shutting them down and telling them they can't change the world, deciding instead to support the fact that they even care enough to want to try.

We could guide them and help them and try to understand that they have formed their thoughts and opinions based on the world they grew up in, just as we did and the generations before us all did.

I had a conversation with my dad at one point about this "great resignation". This conversation happened before there was even a name to it yet. I was thinking of moving on from my job and while my parents are always supportive, my dad in particular is also always concerned for me.

To be fair, I sometimes make very big and impulsive decisions. Things like dropping out of college and moving to NYC with my friends at 18 years old, quitting my salaried job that kept me on throughout a pandemic, etc. So it's not totally unwarranted.

He and I talked about the direction the world was turning in and how much these younger generations were pushing for the work world they wanted rather than accepting what they're being offered.

I told my dad that generally I agreed with this sentiment and then I told him something I think a lot of us feel on some level, I told him that I didn't care about this change just for me or for future generations. I care because of my him, and my mom.

My parents were in the military. My dad was gone for 8-9 months at a time, multiple times throughout my childhood. I know people whose military parent was not around for a single birthday until they hit their teens. I know people who had a military parent that never came home from deployment, period.

This is the life of military families. They willingly give everything for the security of knowing their kids will always have a roof over their head and medical care.

We were privileged to have our basic needs met, and somehow we still struggled financially for many years, and it's not uncommon in our country and I have never fully understood it.

It was baffling to me that my dad could be away from us for the better part of a year, my mom could be working as well and we were still tight on money.

I care about an overhaul of the workforce in America because of my parents and the way I watched them give absolutely everything they had, just to make sure we could have a happy life in suburban America.

And in comparison to the average American, that's a happy scenario. The fact is that it can get much worse, for single mothers and fathers living on one income, for parents who didn't have a trade or college education. There are millions of Americans who didn't and still don't even have enough to meet basic needs.

It wasn't fair to them. It should've never been that way and I still have hope that someday it won't be.

I think on some level we all do this. I think it's much too simplistic to look at a generation crying for change and assume they are doing it for no other reason than their own convenience. Rather, we are all the product of our raising and we see these injustices as children and carry them with us into adulthood.

And millennials should know this better than anyone because we were literally just there. With the amount I hear my generation throw around the term "childhood trauma" you'd think we'd be much more empathetic to the latest generation now unpacking theirs and demanding change because of it.

I blatantly said to a few friends when the "great resignation" was happening that I didn't care why 20 year olds were joining in the movement.

I've heard it suggested more than a few times that especially the youngest of the workforce knows nothing about how bad work can actually get and rather they are just piggy backing on this because they are lazy.

I don't care.

I know that's dramatic but I don't. Every movement is going to have people who are there for all the wrong reasons but there is power in numbers and if those people help us get to where we want to be I don't care. Let's go. Glad to have you. The rest, I believe, will work itself out.

As millennials, we have had a lot of big ideas. So can someone please explain to me why with everything we say we want, why would we fight a younger generation whose ultimately after the same things? Because we don't think they've earned the right to want those things? It seems a little counterproductive to me.

And while we're on it, can we just in general kill this mentality that because I suffered, you must suffer too?

I work in the film and television production industry and this shit mentality is rampant there.

And guess what? It's not making anyone happier or more productive. It makes for grumpy people who feel taken advantage of. And as the public saw in the fall of last year, it can also make for overworked, exhausted people who make mistakes. Mistakes that are sometimes critical and even fatal.

And before we try to slap the "it builds character" motto on everything. No. Just no. Not everything builds character. And even if it did why don't those babies of nepotism have to build character like the rest of us? Why does it seem the only people we're trying to make build character are the people struggling at the bottom?

People born into wealth and privilege, don't they need to build character too? No, just poor people? Okay, I see what you're trying to do there.

In general, I get it. Everyone loves an underdog story. There are countless incredible pieces of film centered around a protagonist who faces repeated setbacks and traumas and still emerges victorious, but let's be honest, in real life that's not always how it goes.

Sometimes repeatedly pushing someone down creates a villain origin story, not a hero.

I miss being young sometimes. Not because I miss my looks at that age, or the way it felt like I could literally drink like a fish and barely have a headache the next day.

I mean yes sometimes I miss that last one, but I miss being young mostly because I miss being idealistic.

Age not surprisingly has a way of making a lot of us jaded. I know I'm jaded. And contrary to what you might assume, I am a hard worker and for a long time I believed I would be sucking it up all the way to retirement, but a pandemic and years of no one seemingly knowing what the hell is about to happen has made me tired. I think it's made a lot of us tired. Being an adult is tiring. Physically, mentally, emotionally.

I know why we want to believe we're building character when we're actually just on the verge of a mental breakdown. Because when the disillusionment really sets in and you resign yourself to the fact that this is the way the world works you really do all you can to then convince yourself that it's okay and even that it somehow helped you rather than hurt you.

But I miss the days when I was young and I knew in my heart of hearts, that the bare minimum wasn't good enough, especially in the US. A country who wants to claim that we're the best of the best. If you want to be the best, why rest? If our government had half the hustle culture mentality of a 25 year old crypto investor, oh lord, we could be doing some truly amazing things.

Regardless of what you think is plausible or realistic, is a younger generation pushing for a drastically better future really that bad? What's that saying I was obsessed with, the one that was on a colorful poster in my 3rd grade class, "shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars."

Yeah, let's do that. And the next time a Gen Z'er starts ranting about how the world needs to change and they are going to enact this change maybe try to remember, they are young, they might be a little idealistic, but they are shooting for the moon. Even if they miss, maybe they'll land with the stars, and with any luck we'll be landing with them.