Uncertainty, Loss, and Finding Community.

There are so many ways to organize a life. By time, by place. By school and the punctuation of semesters. By loved ones coming or leaving, going or staying. 

When I meet other young people, I’m always astounded by how quickly we move through life. We rattle off where we’re living, what we’re studying, and how we fill up our spare time and sense of self. We live too fast to be stuck in one place or one feeling for too long.

But I feel that Gen Z has also taken critical notice of living with grief and uncertainty. Public opinions sometimes associate Gen Z with “quiet quitting,” entitlement, and job-hopping. The cost of living is causing many Gen Zers to live at home or seek help from family. Suicide rates have risen among US college students and even doubled in the past 20 years for college athletes. 

Far from creating divisions between generations, these points force us to consider more broadly: under what conditions do we become who we are?

Last year, I couldn’t have given you an answer. Just a few weeks before joining the NMGZ community in Atlanta, my college lost a student to suicide. I cannot, and will not, ever make sense of it. Qingyang, better known as K, was a year below me. She was a founder of our Chinese Student Association, an impressive (and intimidating) peer, a doting cat owner, and a wonderful friend. After her passing, the campus was heavy with sadness, a dense malaise. 

When we kicked off the Atlanta trip with a workshop on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, I thought about what it meant to find community while living in the aftermath. Everyone has lost someone. Everyone has felt out of place even—or especially—in workplace settings, where uncertainty is a weakness. Everyone has felt unsure, no matter how quickly you’ve moved through life. In a drawing activity, where my peers and I shared illustrations of what DEIB might look like, no two pieces looked the same. Yet no interpretation was incorrect, either.

I can’t underscore the many insights I’ve taken from wonderful professionals we met in Atlanta: how to strengthen localized marketing while maintaining global visions, the value of networking cross-functionally, or why the heck third-party cookies are so invasive. But I’m also deeply grateful for the NMGZ peers I met on this trip, who lead such rich and passionate lives, and who live boldly with uncertainty every day.

Life after a loss can be easy to periodize. There is the ‘before’ and the ‘after.’ There is the thing that changed you and its aftermath. But in seeking out community—and acknowledging every emotional state we come with—we can make this business of living that much more meaningful.