Are you having a bad day, week, month, year?

Did you arrive at this spot in your life and realize that things aren’t as peachy as they should be?

Does the news of the world frighten and confuse you, and make you wonder what the heck happened?I’ve got great tidings for you.  The problem is neither in your stars nor yourself.  You’re not to blame.

Unless, of course you were born between the years 1981 and 1996.

‘Cause it’s all the millennials fault!

I honest to dog dressed just like this.  What the heck was I thinking?

That’s right, the world is a terrible place and it’s all because of the children born in a certain fashionably questionable span of fifteen years.  They have ruined our lives, destroyed the economy, and given all baby boomers varicose veins.  They’re touchy, cranky, and don’t like McDonald’s. The entire list of previously awesome things that are now atrocious due to millennials is too long to list, but what follows is some of the more hair-raising examples.Shopping malls; the places where we grew up, hung out, met crushes, fell in love, then bought our wedding dresses and rented turquoise tuxedos.  Those whippersnappers now shop online and patronize locally owned small businesses.  They are responsible that those giant cathedrals for the worship of conspicuous consumption, and its ensuing unnecessary credit card debt are quickly becoming empty things of the past.The game of golf.  For some reason kids today don’t see the allure in dressing in ugly candy-colored matching sets and riding a kiddy car around acres of land tortured with chemicals, chain saws, and mowers into perforated, make-believe Edens so they can hit tiny balls with sticks and pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege.Next time you run into a grocery store and those thousands of boxes of sugar-frosted, vitamin sprayed, artificially colored and flavored breakfast cereal have dwindled to a mere few hundred, blame those kids.  For some reason they think they’re too good to eat pseudo-food full of ingredients that were created in a lab in Altoona.

The obsession with selfies has the anti-aging industry convinced that the millennials have no interest in what they have to offer.  But, in this case I believe the fear is totally unfounded.  Millennials account for 47% of heavy buyers in a $13 billion cosmetic market.  And more in photo editing apps.This info has been interpreted that with makeup and filtering no one will ever look old.  Maybe not in a photo.  But remember, the oldest of the millennials are not even forty yet.  The first time a 45-year-old millennial looks into the bathroom mirror in full sunlight after a long night?  Amazon won’t be able to get enough vans full of anti-aging products up their driveways.There are industries that will disappear because young people have no need for the product.  But that’s been happening since folks lived in caves and hunted woolly mammoths with sticks and spears.  When’s that last time you bought a chamber pot or a buggy whip?

These problem children bring something new to the party, though.  They have this beautiful duality of attitude toward differences and diversity.  On one hand, they don’t give a fig about the “otherness” of others.  They don’t judge; it’s not their journey.But they are also fiercely protective of each other, their struggles, and vulnerabilities.  It may not be their journey, but they are deeply committed to help make the paths of each other as smooth and safe as they can.

Yeah, they wreck stuff and break things.  But they’re kids and have the capacity for growth.  And, where it counts?  They kinda got it goin’ on.Thanks for your time.