Message to the Millennials
By Maceo Keeling –
In these articles I have shared my perspectives on entrepreneurship, death and dying, finances, finding your passion, history, our future, and a great deal more.
Today I have a Message to Millennials.
When I think about the future of our nation I am hopeful, but I am not optimistic. Optimism is based on evidence that leads us to believe something good will happen (or something bad will not)—it comes from our head as well as our heart. Hope, however, requires faith in something that cannot be seen—it’s based in our heart alone.
As we look at America’s Millennial generation, we find many significant differences between them and the familiar Baby Boomers—the children of the heroes of World War II. The Millennials are Boomers’ children (and grandchildren), and in some ways they couldn’t be more different from their elders—even more than in the famous “generation gap” of the 1960s.
Despite the radical upheavals of that decade, most Boomers settled down, sought good jobs, and organized their lives around work. Millennials, on the other hand, prefer to organize their work around their lives. Boomers value and protect their privacy, while Millennials often publish every detail of their lives on social media. Most Boomers viewed marriage as the honorable way to legitimize childbearing, while many Millennials consider marriage restrictive and unnecessary, feeling free to have children out of wedlock.
Boomers benefited from the ultimate successes of the industrial revolution—unlimited choices in consumer goods, financial expansion, trade, entertainment, travel, and self-indulgence—while Millennials are driving the information revolution and taking a turn away from acquisitiveness, preferring eBooks and Netflix to home libraries or cable TV, choosing Uber instead of three cars in the garage, living in smaller houses or apartments that don’t even have a garage. Part of their virtual reality suggests less stuff = more virtue.
Boomers may not have had all the answers, but they survived hot and cold wars, economic turmoil, stagflation, recessions, and cultural and civil revolution. Millennials are faced with challenges of global warming, miseducation, and health crises in epidemic proportions. With all the changes that have occurred and the differences between the generations, however, one LIGHT has not dimmed from the fabric of our society. Perhaps we may agree that what the world needed then, and what the world needs now, is a Savior.
Millennials are apparently less religious than Boomers. Indeed, one of the most striking findings in a recently released religious study on the landscape of youth in America is that Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) are much less likely than previous generations to pray or attend church regularly, or to consider religion an important part of their lives.
By many measures, every generation since the “Greatest Generation” has been less religious than their parents. And while I am no historian, religious scholar, sociologist or anthropologist—just a guy who has lived long enough to testify about the importance of religion in my life—I see an irrefutable decline as I watch the decrease in numbers of believers.
For me, the purpose of religion is to lift mankind out of the quagmire of ignorance into the peace and joy of salvation, but many young people think that faith in God is a primitive, unsophisticated practice for old people.
My message to Millennials today is that the price you must pay for wisdom is the loss of your youth. Just reflect: It’s never young people who say, “If I knew then what I know now…”
I want you to know now that you hold the answer to the world’s challenges in your heart. Search deeply for the truth as you may come to understand it and walk in the Spirit of Love, Peace, and Joy. Some will find it in in the shadow of the almighty God; others may consider Nature, or the Stars. My call today is not to choose for you but to invite you to seek and embrace your spiritual true north. I don’t know about you, but “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”
You don’t have to be great to get started, but you do have to get started to become great! Answer the call!
Dr. King had a dream, now we must have vision. The Conscious Call radio program airs every Monday at 11:30 a.m. on WRES-FM 100.7. In a collaboration with the radio program, the Urban News will help keep readers informed about events, programs, news, and the progress of The Conscious Call. For more information, contact the Conscious Call at (828) 989-6999 and visit www.theconsciouscall.com.
The opinions and statements made in this column are solely the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of the Urban News.
