These past few weeks, I’ve read and seen various incarnations of a concept that is best summed up in an article I read in early September from the Huffington Post. The article’s subject – Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy – mainly focuses on our generation’s unhappiness in the workplace, and is delved into throughout the proceeding paragraphs, formulas, and diagrams. Ultimately, it concludes that my generation is unhappy (referred to as GYPSYs, or Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies) because we’ve been raised to believe that we are spectacularly special by our Baby Boomer parents. Problems arise when we get out into the “real world”, entering it with “a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility” as a result of our childhoods. One might ask: isn’t an optimistic attitude a good thing in the world? Well, in this case, that optimism supposedly sets us GYPSYs up for colossal disappointment. Because, when our new jobs end up being less fulfilling than we expected, or we end up not snagging the title of “standout co-worker” in the office (namely, we end up being much less “special” than we were led to believe as children), we become unhappy with the reality of our lives falling much shorter than our expectations. To make it worse, that unhappiness can be compounded with the comparisons our generation tends to make between ourselves and acquaintances’ fabricated lives on social media.

Though the author hits upon multiple other points, the unhappiness-in-the-job-market angle stood out the most to me. Now, at first I was slight angry; I mean, what kind of article was this to tell me that I wasn’t special?

“I certainly am one of the few that are actually special,” I grumbled to myself while reading the article. I instantly wanted to write down all the indignant thoughts flowing through my head. But then I decided to take a step back, and spend some moments pointedly thinking on what the article was professing. After objectively looking at the article’s points, I had to say that I did agree with some of them – truthfully, it can be detrimental to compare one’s activities to those seen on social media, because comparisons lead to discontent; and I did agree with the admonition near the end of the article that our generation should never lose our ambition in our life’s pursuits. Continue reading →