Morgan Hartley

When three gunmen walked into Charlie Hebdo offices Wednesday morning and executed 12 people, eight of whom were journalists, they made a stand against free speech.

Everywhere you go, you are being tracked. The cell phone in your pocket records your daily commute, which bars you visit, who you talk to and what you tell them via text.

If we can do that—if we can look into our communities and give ourselves another reason to vote, to care—then enough of us might show up to tilt the balance of power, to give ourselves a voice.

I wanted to go again. I wanted another fix of that thrill, the open freedom that only life on the road can give you. It didn’t matter that I’d only been home six weeks—I missed it.

I hated Manhattan when I came home. It seemed a desk job purgatory. I had just spent two years riding a bicycle around Eurasia and working as a journalist, and even the most glamorous jobs the town had to offer seemed boring.

It seems that waiting has been a key part of everything I’ve ever tried to accomplish.

Unless you are a doctor, or maybe a carpenter, or any other skill that is badly needed in the day to day running of a child care organization, you may end up doing more harm than good.

Morgan frowned. Chris’ approach sounded awfully Freudian, without measurable action steps.

Boys danced friskily in drum circles around bright, ceramic idols of Hindu gods; colorfully clad woman pushed past each other among seas of roadside stalls emitting wonderful and awful smells; rickshaw drivers swerved inches around us.

Debt is the sacrifice made so that the next generation can move up.

He told me that his wife was dead, his kids were gone, and so were most of his friends. He had no friends, really. He told me he reads all day to pass the time, that it felt like the world had left him behind.

But from the long view, the reality is that the United States is still one of, if not the greatest, place on earth to live. And we millennials are one of the most privileged generations ever to live