Call us what we are: Generation AA. A generation of alcoholics and workaholics. A generation that cares more about saving the earth that about the bickering of politics. We buff our personal brands with polish from the encouragement of others, and our lives are made up of fifteen side hustles that put us in jobs for less than five years. You don’t understand us. We know you don’t. We know that the reaction to not understanding us is to fear us, to undermine us, and to call us entitled. You don’t know the value of hard work, you’d say, and I’d look at you, straight in the eyes, shaking your hand with the same hand that held an icy latte because no one taught me the correct politics of the office – and tell you that my mind, in itself, is a creation of my own hard work. It’s a smooth, yet rocky, canyon of echoes and dreams–dreams that have been cultivated by experience and adventure.

I value time more than I value things. You may think I’m a millennial, but I was born twenty years before you called us whiny and entitled. So, you making a generalization about a group of people who are fighting, crying, breathing, hoping for a world with change makes you the small one. We are a beacon of light. Every time we open our glossed lips or hit publish, we’re changing the day. We dress carelessly. Our bra straps show and our jeans are too tight, and we’re told that men should make more because they’re the head of our family. Our black lips whisper in dark alleyways at night plotting to kill our successors and we are confident in the ideal that love will always conquer hate.

We are united and we are open. We will open our gates and our doors to people that are not like us because we recognize that freedom with boundaries is not freedom at all. We are the generation that will overcome your shortfalls and clean up your economy and rally to protect the earth. We are strong and we are many.