Millennial shares eye-opening message about growing up in a 'time when life was real' and it is resonating with many
For older generations who have lived their prime years around the 90s, the earlier eras are a bittersweet lane to ponder. Every millennial can recall being the youth of their time and having that energy and carefree attitude. u/amberazanu shared a post reminiscing about how life felt back then and shared an eye-opening message about how authentic things were. Right from in-person conversations to raw and wild lifestyles, each memory hits home to many. They recalled the time they “lived through the heart” and how the digital and technological aspects have upturned that reality into an imagination.
“A time when laughter wasn’t typed out. It echoed in the streets, in living rooms, in the warmth of voices. We didn’t check if someone was online. We just went to them and knocked on their doors,” the post read. It added that life was lived in the present, with every possible feeling. “We called their house phones, nervously clearing our throats before asking, ‘Is X home?’” they added. The millennial mentioned their prime years were full of risks, big and small and even exploring something new each day. “We didn’t stay inside. The world was our playground. We ran, we scraped our knees and we didn’t care. We had curfews but begged for five more minutes. Those weren’t just five extra minutes. They were five minutes of belonging. Five minutes of feeling alive,” they poignantly noted.
Their favorite era included “legs tangled on the floor, controllers in hand, screaming at the TV during Mario Kart, swearing we’d never forgive the friend who threw the last red shell.” “But we always did. Because losing meant one more round, one more chance to win, one more memory made,” they remarked. While taking a walk down music’s memory lane, the person noted that the classics never get old. It required waiting for hours with “fingers hovering over the record button, trying to catch our favorite song.” Mixtapes were an encapsulation of love. “We poured ourselves into them, picking each song like it was a love letter, hoping it would say what we couldn’t,” the post read.
Even pictures were such that “every click mattered” in their generation. “We held those photos in our hands, not in a cloud, flipping through them, laughing at the terrible ones, cherishing the perfect mistakes,” it was pointed out. There were “unfiltered memories,” each of these unhinged experiences brought and it was all the millennials knew. To be real and to be raw. “We didn’t text from across the room. We whispered. We passed notes in class. Inside jokes that made us giggle long after the moment had passed,” they remarked. “Instant messaging that has us waiting for replies that never come” is no match for the real-time fun and excitement those conversations held.
“And when we were bored, we felt it. We didn’t scroll to escape it. Boredom made us climb trees, build forts, tell stories, and lie on our backs staring at the sky, dreaming of the future. It made us imagine,” the millennial said. “The worst part is that we didn’t know we were saying goodbye while we were still living in those moments. We didn’t know that one day, we’d miss having to call a landline. We didn’t know that knocking on a friend’s door would become a thing of the past. We didn’t know that one day, we’d have the whole world at our fingertips and yet feel more alone and depressed than ever,” they concluded.
u/jfitzfger88 said, "Nostalgia always hits hard." u/youcancallmebryn wrote, "The paragraph about radio and burned CDs hits hard. I like to think of it as my friends and I pouring our hearts into them. I still have a handful of them that one of my best friends made." u/Benjiming remarked, "Thanks. This one is for older millennials and I liked it." u/thatguyad added, "The best of times and the last of the times."
