Who Are We?

 

"We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving...We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, multivitamins...we are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers...We are the daughters of the feminists who said, 'You can be anything,' and we heard, 'You have to be everything'." - Courtney Martin

"Never have I seen so many young, privileged people trying so hard to be happy. There are countless articles written about it, blogs named for it, workshops attending to it. Who ever said we're supposed to be happy all the time, anyway? We're not. And the pressure to do so might be what's making us unhappy to begin with. It's OK if you're not completely content with your life twenty-four hours a day. Can you imagine what a boring person you'd be if you were? Going through shit storms, feeling uninspired, hating the way you look and having guilt over not accomplishing enough are just some of the things that make you interesting, relatable and human. Not to mention, if you're reading this, then you have internet access and if you have internet access, it stands to reason that you have a computer, which makes me think you probably have a place to live, with electricity and plenty of food to eat and clean clothes to wear, which are all things that an enormous amount of people living on the planet today do not have. This is not to say that people shouldn't strive to better their positions in life, however it seems like so many of us are no longer content with a regular amount of happy, yet dead-set on being maniacally jubilant, all of the time." - Kelly Rheel