Hi, I have a lot to say today, but I’ll try to compress it to the briefest form of a blog post as much as I can.
A lot of us have negative things to say about Generation Z and y’all are not wrong most of the things you say are right but, just listen to me for a moment. We can all agree that the best part of being a Gen Z is the huge awakened moments we’ve had on the definition of work.
When we were kids, if you’d ask us what we desired to be when we grow, very few people would have said that they wanted to be a business person or even a creative entrepreneur. I blame that on our lack of exposure(for me at least)
Most of us didn’t know how rewarding it can be to just be ourselves and do what we enjoy. And we can’t blame that on our parents either for not teaching us that. I’m sure they taught us everything they know about the world according to how they were raised and their perspective. It is true education was the key to a successful life back then. It presumably is, but the rise of non-educated people succeeding in life has made us question that notion.
Lately I’m prone to reading books like ‘The 4 hour work week’ or books that try to explain how one can escape 8–5, I know I’m not alone. No one wants to experience the mess of Mombasa Road anymore. Or Thika Roads traffic.
It doesn’t make sense that we were born to attend school, graduate, get work later on retire, and then die. And this is the generation that has the opportunity to learn that early in life. There are more ways of earning a living than employment. As one would expect with few employment opportunities out there, we are forced to identify other ways of earning a living.
But to my thinking, a huge problem lies in the normal definition of work. No wonder we have a lot of miserable people stuck in jobs they loathe. They don’t dare to step out of the societal definition of work. Can the definition of work be anything(legal) that one enjoys doing that generates enough income and pays bills?
Ask yourself What your dream job would be. If it is out there go for it and if it’s not start creating the job that you want. I also find it problematic how we’ve tied our identities to work. If you meet a person for the first time, the first question is always what do you do? And the expected answer is what you do for work, not who you are as a person.
In conclusion, I’m personally impressed with how we are experiencing a mindset shift, but let’s keep in mind that not everyone is set to own a business or be creative entrepreneur . Many people are just quite comfortable with 8-5 and that’s okay. There’s no need for a glamorous one side of a coin. The point is to make this life as comfortable as you can, according to your terms.
