The greater majority of Americans desire happiness. Everyone does! No one desires to be sad or depressed. Happiness has an equation. Happiness = Reality – Expectations.

Most of our parents were born in the 1950’s and 1960’s making them baby boomers, which is defined as a generation of people who were born out of the Great Depression and served in the second World War, they are known as the G.I generation.

When the war ended, the boys came home from war and started working, going to school, and raising families. When they had kids they raised them to believe that if you work hard it will lead to success. For the baby boomers it proved to be true! As the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s came upon them, the country had an amazing amount of economic prosperity. The baby boomers were doing better than they had ever expected. It was at this time that the baby boomers wanted to start their own families.

Unlike the G.I generation, the baby boomers raised their kids with the expectation that they could literally be anything they wanted as long as they worked hard towards it. They instilled their kids with a sort of “you’re special” identity. At one time there was the American Dream, now it’s “My Own Personal Dream.” Generation Y now feels that they were entitled to the same opportunities as everyone else because their grandparents and parents had great success. The problem with Generation Y though is that two things separate them from the G.I generation and the baby boomers. One: they all grew up with the internet, and two: they are all special.

With those two things, Generation Y feels like they will automatically be successful once the world sees how special they are. But reality is different, careers are hard to get and require a lot of work, and with high expectations tacked on, we come right back to the equation, Happiness = Reality – Expectations. With higher expectations than what reality really is, your happiness is in the negatives.

So Generation Y is unhappy. This paved the way for many schools and programs today to change the way things have been done. With the rise in awareness for child depression there are schools that have taken out dodge ball and even made gym class optional. Kids are receiving ribbons because they participate or given a trophy for seventh place. Bullying is considered to be at an all-time high, when really it isn’t, and now that the media is flooded with anti-bullying ads and victimizing kids, we are making our youth weaker and weaker. There is also cyber bullying, where people hide behind the keyboard to bash on vulnerable people, leading to some who have committed suicide. Is this what the world has come to? Bullying should not be tolerated, but instead of doing studies relating bully to mental issues, give him the belt, and instead of coddling the victim, put him in the gym!

I must have left my bus crying almost every day from Kindergarten up until maybe eighth grade. However, I persevered. I still played sports, volunteered, and gutted through it because that’s how I was raised. Eventually I forced myself into the gym; I got bigger and didn’t want to tolerate bullying anymore, then I joined the Marines after high school, where I became more like the people of the G.I generation.

Now I am at the University of New Haven, amongst my fellow Generation Y people all of the time. My only advice is, you are not special, no one is. No matter how amazing you think you are, you are not. Get off your smart phones for once, stop posting pictures of you at the gym flexing or wearing yoga pants, and call your grandparents or go to an American Legion. Engage in real one-on-one communication and see the world outside of your own. America is the greatest country in the world because of us; “WE THE PEOPLE,” make America great. However, we can only do this if we go back to the values of those that came before us.