Our country is in identity crisis. People forget we are a relatively young country. We are basically in our teenage years of development. We are beginning to enter this stage of questioning what do we really believe about our origins and founding principles. This is no different than the average teenager as they go off to college and challenge all of the things they have learned thus far in life. The struggle for freedom, power, and relationships is ever present on the national scale.
There are millions of people struggling to find work in this country that pays a decent wage. This leaves a person feeling powerless to provide for themselves or a family. Not only is money power, but it is freedom to pursue activities and make more choices. This should remind you of when you were a teenager just beginning to make any money and feeling stifled by how expensive activities and interests really cost.
Similarly, our country no longer feels like it has a direction. We are seemingly in a tailspin like a fighter jet wounded in war. We are currently doomed to be a country once known to behold conservative and liberal ideas that never found a way to integrate for the sake of our children's future. We have regressed to a childlike state that only wants what each individual wants with no regard for how it impacts anyone else.
We have somehow lost the ability to cherish what made us unique. From the very beginning, it was about the pursuit of equality. This does not mean we will ever achieve it. It simply means we are always in the pursuit of growth, maturity, and increased awareness of the need for change to achieve better equality. Every teenager comes to this reflective epiphany that where they come from does not dictate who they are or will become. Our past is simply experience and knowledge to be used to make informed decisions in the present.
Now is the time for a new generation of leadership. It is time for millennials to take responsibility for this nation in turmoil away from the dysfunctional hands of political ideologies and the invincible debt belief.
We need to recognize how much is sacrificed by our men and women in uniform and meet our obligations to take care of their wounds. We need to recognize we have always been a nation of immigrants while being a nation of rules and law. We need to recognize that being responsible for the next generation should outweigh our need for immediate gratification and delusions of grandeur on a global scale.
We no longer need to be a nation in identity crisis. Deep down, we know who we are. It is time we drown out the noise of negativity and hopelessness, but amplify the voice of hope and action for change today; not tomorrow.