In the madness of today’s tense socioeconomic and political environment, you might agree that it is necessary to escape one’s reality into the realms of another. Truly, this is a common and rather healthy practice: finding and exercising an outlet which allows a person to relax, contemplate that which escaped to the back of one’s mind, and reset. I personally have many outlets, each fulfilling a different type of release – exercise relieving pent up energy, music validating my emotions, and reading, which either transports me into a book’s alternate world, or helps me to make sense of that which seems senseless. My most recent read, How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division by Elif Safak, helps me with the latter.

Lately I have struggled to understand how people everywhere – and specifically in the United States –  have become so polarised. People simultaneously find themselves at opposite ends of political, social and economic spectrums, but do nothing to act on their differences through conversation and compromise, and instead resort to finger-pointing. The younger generation’s tendency to protest in an effort to achieve equality, recognition, and tolerance for people of different beliefs and backgrounds contradicts the intolerant nature of the relationship between America’s polarised political parties. Young people are quick to formulate arguments founded on the basis of inclusivity and open-mindedness, yet naively neglect to practice what they preach by understanding and respecting all political viewpoints and the importance of unified support in order to accomplish a desired result.

While reading Shafak’s book, many passages have left me wonderfully perplexed, causing me to turn inward and reinterpret dozens of scenarios which took place over the indisputably eventful year of 2020, whose plethora of memorable events (to put it kindly) have carried over to 2021. At the latest stage of my reading, the current passage I am digesting has helped me understand Shafak’s interpretation of why the younger generations struggle to accomplish their goals amidst division, and I believe her theory is too important not to share.

Shafak discusses the way in which her grandmother supported her single mother to finish her bachelor degree and start her own career. By doing so, her mother not only accomplished financial independence, but achieved what her grandmother could not, and created a standard that Elif could strive towards and perhaps surpass. Simply put, her grandmother believes “We inherit our circumstances, we improve them for the next generation” (Shafak, 51). For Shafak’s grandmother supporting her daughter’s career was not a parental sacrifice, but a natural generational process by which the parent gives to the child that which they did not have so that the child can work to enhance their circumstances in comparison to those of their parent’s.

Shafak switches from this inspired narrative and observes that this attitude hardly holds true in today’s world, versus that of the post-Great Depression, Cold War, or grandma and mother’s era. For example, the baby boomers took great struggle and strife in stride, and worked with what they had. Their generation persevered after mass destruction of economies, governments, land, and of course, lives. They “trusted in progress,” whereas Shafak concludes that today’s Generation-Z lacks the unrelenting, motivational faith that tomorrow will be better and brighter than yesterday.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Generation-Z had not had any all-consuming national or international event preparing “…them for the arrival of the hard, uninviting, and inhospitable new world of downgrading, devaluation of earned merits, doors shown and locked, volatility of jobs, and stubbornness of joblessness” (Shafak, 53). Her criticism continues, begging the question, where is Generation-Z’s fight? Their resiliency? Their motivation to be better? Their belief that there can be a better, brighter tomorrow?

Shafak is indeed very critical, but I was not scared away, nor frustrated, perplexed, bothered, or insulted by her observation. I was, and continue to be, curious.

Is this true? I think it is.

Generation-Z is quick to complain. Yes, the world is facing incredibly difficult challenges at a magnitude previously unmet by our predecessors, however, I envision this as the younger generation’s opportunity to rise up and overcome. People tend to quickly complain about their circumstances, instead of innovating; creating a new path with alternate avenues and possibilities. Why not discuss differences to create solutions, instead of unproductively identifying that which we do not agree with, or like about one another?

As time goes on, the developed world’s knowledge in science, math, the humanities, and more accelerates and changes, resulting in newer generations naturally becoming “smarter” than the last. Are we, (the most educated students to emerge from the developed world as of now), taking our newfound knowledge and skills for granted? Have we lost our lust to be better, to work harder, to achieve more in honor of and out of respect for our parents, who worked so hard to give us the world we live in, regardless of how broken, or mangled it might seem to us now?

I was taught to work with what I have, and to not only make the best of it, but to ensure that I persevere through any difficulty, big or small, until I thrive in whatever environment, or given any circumstances thrown my direction. I am by no means insinuating that I have “risen out of struggle.” I am by no means a shadow of Shafak’s mother, who worked to educate and better herself over a ten year period all while raising a child. But what I do possess is a personal drive to be “better” in whatever way I see fit. We can each decide for ourselves what it means to become “better,” or what it means to improve. For some, this means finishing or starting educational degrees, or switching careers. Maybe it means reconnecting with someone, or having a successful, healthy relationship. Maybe it means finding sacred time within your day just for yourself, to unwind- to release! Everyone’s version of bettering themselves poses different types of struggle and opportunity to grow.

All that matters is that we do challenge ourselves to be better, because it is once we reach this individual conclusion of what personal growth means that we can look ourselves in the mirror and confidently say that like Elif Shafak’s grandmother, we believe that tomorrow, and every day after that, will be better than yesterday because we will be better.

Finally, why should we want to restore and maintain Generation Z’s faith in daily bettering? Because with this attitude society will regain their motivation to work towards a single goal: towards improvement. Determined to improve, people’s willingness to collaborate with one another despite their differences will result in collective productivity, eventually resulting in plausible conclusions for any political, social, scientific, economic, or otherwise, agenda.

Tomorrow can be a better day if we give one another a chance. If we practice what we preach, and listen, and appreciate, and learn from different opinions from people of different backgrounds everywhere. Tomorrow can be a better day because if we decide to act together and better ourselves- to understand ourselves, educate ourselves, balance ourselves, inspire ourselves- then we can ultimately understand, educate, balance, and inspire others too.