Here’s for this month’s bills, here’s for the installment.
And you ask why we are making little progress when we have worked for years,
"Where is your house, where is your car? Where is your retirement plan?"
And you call us 'the generation that gives up',
For not trying hard enough. Trying what? Applying for loans?

Oh, how you are proud of your country’s growth,
And claim that was the fruit of your past sweat and labor,
Well, maybe you are right because for you, our generation is nothing but the victim of consumerism,
Of course it is our fault that we are designed as a weapon of massive consumption,
The graphic needs our money to continue to mount.

You recount tales of steady careers; 
and shake your head when we move jobs.
“Back in my days,” you muse, "we stood by the company that feeds us.”
But what if loyalty no longer yields the same fruits, 
and the only way to climb the ladder is to jump ship?
What do we do when our salaries never match the bloating prices,
with a grim forecast that our lifetime savings 
won’t suffice to send our kids to college?

You grumble how we always laze around and are glued to our phones, 
when back in your time, you worked so hard 
because there were no laptops and cell phones, internet and Google.
Well, maybe you should be grateful technologies weren’t as advanced—
what you had to do in a week, we need to finish in hours.
Work hours don’t get shortened; they may even be infinitely longer—
thanks to smartphones that timelessly chain us to our colleagues and clients.
It's too bad we don’t evolve along with technology. 
It would be nice to have additional brains, eyes, and hands.

And you lament when your children falter,
lose their jobs and struggle to regain footing,
in a market that fluctuates more wildly than ever.
Oh must be nice to live back in your days, 
when offices and factories sprung like pop-up stores.
I, too, would like to get a high-paying job 
that is not gated by degrees or multilingual demands,
and leaving damaged earth and thick pollution as legacies.
But I guess my generation should be thankful for the contracts we need to renew periodically—
who knows when they decide they do not need our signs anymore. 
The precarity!

Oh let us not forget that we are also a weak complainer, 
that we need to go to a professional listener or consume pills to feel better.
You said there was no such thing back in your days, 
because the answer lies in prayers.
But maybe God has a quota of how many prayers and problems He can answer.
And maybe back in your days, many voices were stifled, 
because no one wanted to be seen as a storm-chaser. 
Now, we choose to voice our struggles, 
because silence is golden no longer.

Yes, I admit we are the generation that gives up. 
And maybe, we should just give up.
And I know. 
I know not everyone in your generation is like you, 
and my generation is like me.
But back in your days, everything was perfect.
Now in my days, everyone is at fault
—that includes you.

Maybe we need to weave a new tale, starting with this grudging admission.
Then we might see your unwelcomed quibbles 
not as relics of past privileges,
but a legitimate concern.
And you can see our despair and hopelessness 
not as a weakness,
but a hidden resilience.
But I wonder if it's futile, this idea of finding common ground,
or building a bridge to share and learn from each generation’s lessons 
without pointing fingers.
Maybe it’s already too late to move past our mutual discontent, 
when every chapter ends in disillusion.