turning a generation old

Age continues to be significant to my understanding of my life. I think to other people it seems like I'm obsessed with myself and think my age is the best, but that's not true. I am just stuck seeing things to the point where it compels me to speak, even though NO ONE sees the value in my thoughts in the present. It feels egoistic to say that I feel like a seer but going through the five years of blog posts on my website, I've said so much stuff especially in 2022 and 2023 that people just now in 2026 are starting to believe.

Talking with a dear friend a couple days ago, where our conversation spanned seven hours of back-and-forth, catching up and breaking down topics relevant to our lives, and she poignantly brought up our births in relation to 9/11 and how we are a generation completely shaped by that. Millenials experienced 9/11, while Gen Z  like myself born in 2001 grew up in a world forever changed by 9/11. I know from speaking with older people that the NYPD rapidly expanded after 9/11, TSA and airport security heavily tightened, Islamophobia raged, and presidents lied to enlist children to fight and die in wars. I've learned the stories of Iraq & Afghanistan veterans who come back utterly shell-shocked, forever PTSD bound, by the shattering of patriotic lies George Bush and Barack Obama told them. 

We spoke on March 1st, while our government was killing Iranian schoolchildren and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the relevance of 9/11 could not be more important. And I really appreciated talking to someone also about to turn 25 in 2026, because we are now able to reflect on our own generation's social, political, psychological, philosophical makeup. Not merely what other generations observe us as, but we are in a place where we can articulate what kind of people we are ourselves. 

My aim or perhaps my recognized strength is that I gave give a layout of the bases without too much depth into each one. Specialized deep learning is so emphasized in our society but I think my personal strength lies in connecting dots, not stacking them. Hopefully that's helpful to someone.