The problem with the youth of today.

“The problem with the youth of today, or the way they call themselves, GEN-Z! is that they want to become rich when they are still young. They want to get what we have worked for decades to build, RIGHT NOW!”

Yes! F#ck yes! But not entirely for the reasons you think. At least not me personally. I want to make BIG money NOW because I want to live life to its edge. I want to travel around the world and meet new people and encounter new cultures, food, traditions, music, art, environments and hospitality. I want to taste the enjoyments of the highborn and the lowborn of these exotic places. I want to invest in my art, to make movies that show the world from my eyes. I want to get that car I have been dreaming about since I turned 20. Live in that cabin on my big but small farm with many but few animals and a view that pacifies the never-ending tempest of thoughts in my mind.

I want to spend my money on my mother and father and siblings and cousins and relatives and definitely on and with my friends. I want to go for that concert that costs someone’s monthly wages. And it’s expensive not because of the greed of its producers but because the artist has put in a lifetime of work to hone their craft to the point that it looks like magic to us mere mortals, so in essence I would pay to be dazzled by the magic of human talent and hard work.

I want travel on the seas and the oceans of the world, and if I live long enough to see it. I want to travel to space and float around the globe we call home in the public travel shuttle the billionaires of the world are trying to build.

I want to taste the finest cuisines that I can consume before crossing the line between food and poison. With a lot of money (now), I can afford to sit and do nothing but think and experience life passively until I get bored and do something until that bores me and I get back to sitting and thinking without a single worry of what I’m going to eat, how I’ll move or where I’ll sleep.

I want to build my own version of the pyramids whatever that will be. With a lot of money, young, you get to think about the legacy you want to build and can start working on it as soon as yesteryear.

I want to be rich now because money is freedom. Wealth buys you time, skill, respect, influence and security.

But why most of all do I want to become wealthy now? It’s a very simple answer that stands above all else.

I don’t know if I’ll see tomorrow. Many phrases explain this sentiment:

Tomorrow never comes.

One of these days is none of these days.

Time waits for no man.

What may be done at any time will be done at no time.

All these fancy phrases are just one big euphemism to mean that death has no calendar. Today I could be laughing or crying with you and tomorrow I am in a casket/ a coffin/a tomb/a grave……/DEAD. Death looms over us like gravity. Its reach is boundless, even the stars no match for it. But despite its fiendish characterization. It serves as a reminder for us to seize the day. To make the most of our time under the sun for we will not have anyone else to blame for our regrets in our last moments but ourselves…and maybe the fates (But that’s a thought for another day).

I imagine to an older person who enjoys the benefit of hindsight, seeing someone fight so hard to achieve what genuinely takes decades to build, in half the time, shows immaturity, and haste which in most cases leads to fatal mistakes. It increasingly seems to be more like taking a photo of lightning. Rare, difficult but not undoable. In a world where these dreams or delusions of grandeur happen to people all the bloody time. I think a child is allowed to fight for the impossible. Because as they say, it was impossible until the fool who didn’t know the rules did it.

Pondered by

Denzel Maniple Everd