It means we hate being called a millennial. It means we grew up with internet access from a young age and have defined our lives around it. It means we say we’re doing fine when we really aren’t. It means we love Paul Rudd. It means have no money. It means that we take incredible Instagram photos that we share with the world while we lay in our beds watching Netflix for seven hours. It means that we can’t afford our apartment. It means we can’t imagine a future beyond the next ten years.

It means we try to “eat green” and the feel guilty when we fail while oil company CEOs are still allowed to continue destroying the world. It means we tweet more about the protests we go to than we spend time actually organizing. It means that we don’t understand the immense power that we possess. It means we’re too distracted to notice.

It means that we know more about our own mental health and ourselves than almost any generation in history. It means we are reduced to an age group classified by Tide Pods and other nonsense when we make up most of the work force in this country. It means we have mixed feelings on Jimmy Fallon.

It means that we work six jobs and don’t have health insurance. It means we live in a constant state of fatigue. It means that we push and push and push ourselves until we feel like breaking and people tell us it’s just part of life, never pausing to consider that the future could be better if we wanted it to be. It means that we are lonely in our thoughts. It means that we listen to hella podcasts.

It means that we are all in this together. It means that generational differences don’t mean shit, if we’re being honest. It means that the more we talk about millennials, the more we stay distracted. It means that we have seen The Office like a thousand times.

It means, and this is important, that it is up to us to change things. It means that we are the ones who can make the difference we have been longing to see. It means that we need to fix this for future generations who are already tired of us. It means that we have student debt. It means that we worry about mass shootings any time we are in public. It means existential dread. It means that it’s up to us.

It means that we can do this.