That awful sense of entitlement

Yesterday, I was lucky to be invited for a web session by the global communications team at work where I chanced upon the phrase "Strawberry Generation". Apparently, millennials are compared with that delicious fruit because for all their sweetness and exoticness, they bruise easily. Try saying a handful of words that you know won't go down well with a millennial, and you'll be tagged on a Facebook post about it before you can say "Yikes!".

The world of marketing is obsessed with the millennials since more often than not, they know what they want. And the speed at which they move from one area of interest to another keeps the competition interesting and the arena wide open for newcomers to make a mark. Off late though, one gets the feeling that they all come along with a strong sense of entitlement and a need for instant gratification. As if the world owes them everything, never mind their contribution to it. I think in that regard, The Secret has done more harm than good. If you work hard for a month, you instantly want a promotion. If you workout for a couple of days, you instantly want to look like a Victoria's Secret model. If you've started a business, you instantly want to become a multi millionaire. Reality check: things don't exactly work that way.

A possible explanation could be the fact that middle class has now graduated to the "upper middle class" and kids have grown up getting everything they laid their pudgy hands on. That, and television. You look at Friends, and you just assume that you'll get paid handsomely for "chillin' " in a coffee shop while you tend to work every once in a while. The movie version of life is so awesome. I remember watching movies when I was younger, and wondering how people jump out of bed, into clothes and rush out to do awesome things, while I spend at least half an hour in the loo and the bath trying to get my bearings after 15 whole minutes of sipping tea in a leisurely manner. Else my day goes downhill right from the beginning!

Recently a Yelp employee wrote a stinker to her CEO in the form of an "Open Letter" because she wasn't happy with her pay. Gone are the days when "struggle" was romanticized. Now, we want to follow our whims, umm, dreams, get paid at par with investment bankers, get nice long holidays to spend that money on fancy trips abroad, update all of this on Facebook, Instagram and SnapChat and tell the world how awesome our lives are. Never mind  the fact that my dream is something I am awful at. Or that the amount of value I add to my organization does not justify the amount in my paycheck.

Not all millennials are stuck up and demanding. But that's the trend. I am a borderline Millennial (mid 80s), and I know how I react when I don't get what I want. That's right - react, not respond. All those months of meditation go straight out of the window when that happens and it takes a while before I can respond to the situation like a mature, slightly evolved human being. Expectation is the root of all misery, and we keep forgetting that much to our own chagrin. In my calmer moments, I remember that tale about a tennis star who got cancer and instead of crying about it said that he never questioned the good things coming his way ever, so why should he question the inconvenient things that life had in store for him?

The world was here way before you were a peanut sized entity in your mum's womb. The world will be here when you've turned to ashes. It owes you nothing. If you really want happiness, quit expecting it from random strangers or objects. Find it within yourself. That's the only hope anyone's really got.