I want to take you back. Remember the distant year 2013? Something happened that year that no one was expecting. Some millennial girl released a pop song and it wasn’t just teenage girls that listened to it. We all did. It was an awesome song. And it represented a simpler time in millennial philosophy.
I keep cruising. Can’t stop, won’t stop grooving.
It’s like I’ve got this music in my mind saying it’s gonna be alright.
Cause the player’s gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the hater’s gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
Shake it off
Shake it off
At the time, I never would have expected that it would take just a few short years for all of millennials to go from being the generation that epitomized shake it off to the generation that epitomizes getting down and out about all the liars and the dirty, dirty cheats in the world.
I used to be so proud to be a millennial. We were the most compassionate, tolerant, and kind people the world had ever seen. One baby boomer podcaster I listen to told a story about going to a high school to give a presentation in the late 2000s and he saw a nerd drop a stack of books and papers and two jocks in football jerseys helped him pick them up.
“That never would have happened when I was in high school,” he gushed.
Just 7 years after “Shake It Off”, Taylor Swift was writing:
I’m so sick of running as fast as I can
Wondering if I’d get there quicker
If I was a man
If I was out flashing my dollars
I’d be a bitch, not a baller
They paint me out to be bad
So it’s okay that I’m mad
What happened, Taylor?
I’m not even going to open the can of worms of refuting any particular excuse you care to use for why you’ve become resentful and nihilistic over the course of a few years (during which absolutely every conceivable thing has drastically improved). Because no one is denying that terrible things have happened and continue to happen.
But what are you going to do about it?
Does complaining help? Does being miserable improve anything at all?
The question we really need to ask ourselves is this: Which philosophy makes things better? The philosophy that you shake it off when things get tough and keep cruising? Or the philosophy that you are sick of running as fast as you can just because cancer isn’t cured and world peace hasn’t broken out when you get there?
