We’re like our own planet: young, lost and wandering.
The generation of today is at a stalemate and it’s normal.
In the fast-paced, technology-laden world of today, Millennials are in a constant state of wander - in a constant state of searching for meaning and purpose, of belonging and settlement. Millennials are in constant search for identities.
And this isn’t abnormal at all. In fact, it is perfectly understandable. The modern world has so much to offer, and for one to explore every possibility and opportunity is very much encouraged. Before, at the age of adulthood, people are expected to have found who they are, to have committed to an identity. But nowadays, to commit to be shut down, tied and restrained - which is why people prefer to be free: free from commitment, free to wander, free to search, no matter how long it takes.
The quest for identity is a long path, and people want to take all paths possible.
The Millennials’ Quest for Identity
I used to waste my junior high school summers playing one game. It’s an action role-playing game called The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. It’s essentially an open world game (you can explore without boundaries and restrictions) where you can create your own story. There’s one main story line for you to follow, but there are a lot of side stories you can do, and the best part is, there is no one fixed outcome of each story, the outcome depends on what you do and what you don’t do.
I never gave it much thought until I wrote this blog - That the very essence of players playing that game never really finish it completely. Heck, some never even touch the main story of the game. It’s always an endless cycle of creation and recreation, restarting and reimagining what kind of character that player is going to be. They don’t what to do the main quest because they already know the outcome - heroic, positive and whatnot. They want to try the side quests because depending on what side quests you do affects the way people look at your character in game. (And plus the main quest entails a pain-in-the-ass grind and needs a lot of commitment to finish.)
And this game perfectly captures the Millennial’s Quest for Identity
The norm for a Millennial’s identity would be Moratorium. If based on James Marcia’s Paradigm of Identity Statuses, Moratorium by definition would be the perfect status to describe what the Millennial is going through.
This kind of Moratorium however, is further specified by calling it the stage of Emerging Adulthood. This stage, in a nutshell, is the stage wherein one is no longer an adolescent, yet is still not an adult - mainly due to instability, curiosity of the world, drive to try everything, to be adventurous.
Emerging Adulthood is where we are mature enough to find what we want and do something about it, but aren’t mature enough to make hard, enduring, mature and committing decisions.
We’re just floating around doing anything and everything we can, finding ourselves, finding something worthwhile, finding something we can do for the rest of our lives.
And it makes sense. Thinking about it now, I am finding myself in such stage of life. With so much opportunities and interests in the world today, I don’t see myself deviating from exploration. I don’t see myself picturing out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I’m at a stage of constant “YOLO-ing” and just letting life figure out itself for me.
