Have we forgotten how to relate to another human being; fail to acknowledge, respect and learn a person as we used to want to do when we were even a little younger?

“Who has the time?” he asked me.

I didn’t have the answer. Maybe I wasn’t sure what to say, who had the time? My mother wanted some chores finished, my friend was having a crisis she needed my support for, there was a vacation pending for months, there were work assignments to finish, the stress was too much, there was no time for myself. How was I to make time and space for another person in my life?

So maybe, he was right after all: who has the time for relationships?

Certainly not this generation.

But more importantly, who cares about relationships any more anyway?

We are the millennials, we are the generation which believes in focusing on ourselves only we have somehow taken that to mean being more entitled and self-centered. We have walls, nay boundaries, around ourselves and we make sure that whoever wants to reach us has to go through a gauntlet of hurdles. Somehow we have also become more uncommunicative, which is ironically hilarious considering how ‘connected’ we all are constantly, to screens and not people. And therein lays one of the biggest tragedies of this generation.

We have basically forgotten how to relate to another human being; we fail to acknowledge, respect and learn a person as we used to want to do when we were even a little younger. But what is more troublesome is that we are all so scared of braving hurt. Somehow we have programmed ourselves to believe that opening up to another person is bound to end up in hurt and that’s that. Might as well not get into the whole thing, eh?

The other thing is how tired we all are from the constant happiness-seeking that we do for ourselves. There are so many things the world and social media is telling us we need to be doing, that we get busy attaining the ideal sweet spot of happiness and forego things like building relationships. Hell, we don’t even take calls anymore because it requires our emotional and mental faculties to be active. Our expectations are high, but the efforts aren’t; our patience is low but the need to be understood great.

In all of this, even if we sign up for a relationship, are we really prepared to handle one? Are we armed to see one through? And after all of this, we sure we don’t have commitment-phobia?

In the wildfire that is hook up culture, maybe romance is dead. I say “maybe” because who wants to lose hope after all?

In the midst of living in a world of heartbreaks, self-love, FOMO, ghosting, moving on, swipes likes and hearts, it takes courage and strength to be able to open your heart and soul up to another person.

So maybe next time I think I am ready to meet someone, I only hope I go ready to put in my best.

And I can only hope, the other person does it too.