I personally don't like tea that much, even though it belongs to Gen-G who romanticizes milk tea. But, looking back over the last few months, I have been drinking 3-4 cups of tea a day, even a person who doesn't like tea much. Perhaps more important to me than the taste of tea is the sense of belonging with friends.

However, it cannot be said that our generation brought the custom of gossiping with friends while drinking tea together. Even now, if you go to tea shops in Bhaktapur and Patan, you will find men of the previous generation drinking tea and talking seriously about how to improve the country's politics. However, it was our generation that made the tea shops in Jhamsikhel and Baneshwar 'Kul'. A big part of contemporary Sahariya culture is drinking tea with friends in the evening at a tea shop. However, we do not have much to do with politics, except for the status of Balen on Facebook. 

Our gossip is different. We talk about our dreams, future and possibilities. One of the main topics of our conversation is your identity crisis. Our generation has been engulfed by capitalism from almost every side. We cannot be lured by job stability like our parents. We value financial and personal freedom more. While having tea at a tea shop, the dream of opening one's own tea shop always comes to mind. Sometimes we even curse our parents for why they didn't do business earlier. With the salary of 30,000 earned by working 9-5 every day, I have to pay the bill for tea and cigarettes in the shop, let's leave aside other necessities.

Some friends are embarking on a BYD of 7 million as entrepreneurs, some have gone to Bali. And when you look at your situation once a month when your friends ask you to go out for Korean food or not, it is natural to feel like the world is over or I have to make more money as fast as possible.  Without

ing, the first time I ate Korean food, I didn't like it one bit. It still doesn't taste so good. However, sometimes I feel like going out to eat. Not much attraction towards clubbing culture. While dancing in the club until 1-2 am, I feel like 'I wish I could sleep quietly at home, what are you going to do at this late night?' However, friends do not say 'jam no'. I've been to Pokhara three times so far, but haven't visited much other than the lakeside restaurants and pubs. Not only Pokhara, Chitwan, Ghandruk, Kurintar, wherever we go, our traveling style is the same. As cheap as possible, but staying in a hotel with a swimming pool, drinking beer, taking aesthetic photos and 

return! While trekking, even if you see the beautiful mountains in front of your own eyes, you will feel the joy of seeing the mountains only if the photos match the aesthetic of Instagram. But despite that, I like to go when I have money.

When I think about why I or my peers do these things, I think it's probably an attempt to fill the void created by the identity crisis. Once you go to Pokhara and come back, the money you have collected after working for 15 days is used up at once. However, if you look at the boat carrying a beer in your hand on the lakeside, even if it's for a moment, you think - 'Dude, life is ours! Was it possible to shoot an eagle like this in the time of parents?' And the feeling of that moment, the feeling of 'life is ours' is deepened by the validation of social media. In accepting my privilege and writing these things, I also realize that there is a distinct Gen-G circle outside of this Saharan culture, one that is struggling very differently from the one I am struggling with. However, trying to mix that generation here for the sake of inclusion is doing injustice to their experience.

This sense of identity crisis personally seems to me to be triggered by social media. Information and communication technology has developed so rapidly that how do we use information along with it? How to survive among the numerous data? We didn't get a chance to learn that. The world has become so small, everyone's life activities are on my screen. Who is doing what? Where are you going? What are you eating? Who is in love? know everything But, when I start taking stock of my own life, I find myself confused as to what I am doing. Everyone is saying the same thing to each other - 'You've made so much progress, man, I haven't been able to do anything!' One of my friends said, 'I feel like I'm having a mid-life crisis'. The natural reaction of a 23-24 year old when someone says something like this is to make fun of it, saying 'don't give a shit'. But sometimes I feel like I'm having a mid-life crisis. I feel like I am in crisis when I look at my life.

No matter how much sadness is going on in life, the caption of the photo posted on Facebook is 'Happiness is the best makeup you can wear'. Despite knowing this, we never stop comparing our situation with others. The whole world has become like a small village. Now we have started to measure our lifestyle by looking at people who grew up in a different environment in a completely different country than ours. Sometimes we are sad that there is no Starbucks in Nepal. Information overload, the blurring between the real and the virtual world is creating common mental stress in our generation. To break the story, Jen-Ji keeps getting accused, 'Nowadays, depression has become fashionable.' It is said that our generation overreacts even to small things, can't digest some things, doesn't have the same tolerance as in the past. However, I do not agree with this statement because the situations that our generation faces are very different and complex than those of previous generations. Today's generation is facing many challenges at the same time - economic instability, job uncertainty, constant pressure to do something different from others, climate crisis, frustration with the government and the feeling that they are carrying the world's suffering due to the Internet! Apart from that, the conflict between personal freedom and family security, the awareness of mental health and the environment in which it has been openly talked about has also brought the conflict within us to the surface. 

As earlier you could pour your heart out at home, today there is no such place. Now neither beating the child nor screaming can reduce stress. So we are not weak, we are finding new ways to understand and resolve mental struggles. Our use of social media is one of those ways. It is this awareness of mental health that has made us different and perhaps more advanced than previous generations.

However, starting to talk about mental struggles is not the solution to all problems, rather the conflicts that follow can deepen. We can neither be completely religious and believe that 'everything is in God's hands', nor can we dare to say that 'God is nothing, we must do what we have to do', being an atheist. It's not even clear what your own priorities are. At the age of 28, spend 40 million and get married or travel the world with that money? Do you have to stand out from the crowd or blend in with the crowd? There are so many people around, but why do you feel lonely sometimes? What exactly is the definition of success for us? And if we can't achieve that 'success', will the whole world really leave and go ahead of us? Perhaps because we don't know how to deal with this question, we are wandering somewhere between the tea shop of Baneshwar on Sunday evening and the pub of Thamel on Friday night - searching for the existence of our own life.