NothingPerSonal

Something I saw in the news today bothered me.

A video from the Minimarg checkpoint in Kargil showed a woman tourist arguing with security personnel after traffic had been stopped. During the exchange, she said, ‘We are Gen Z…we will not tolerate this.’ The video has since gone viral, and even J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah reacted to the phrase, warning against using ‘We are Gen Z’ as a kind of threat whenever someone feels slighted.

Now, I understand frustration.

Waiting for hours is frustrating.

Being delayed when you have somewhere to reach is frustrating.

Not knowing why you are being stopped can be frustrating too.

But frustration and entitlement are not the same thing.

And somewhere, I feel we have started confusing the right to question with the right to disregard.

I do think that there is a very healthy side to Gen Z.

They question outdated practices.

They speak openly about mental health.

They challenge workplace cultures that previous generations silently accepted.

They are more comfortable setting boundaries.

They are far less impressed by hierarchy merely for the sake of hierarchy.

All of that can be refreshing.

But then there is another side that increasingly worries me.

The idea that every inconvenience is unacceptable.

That every restriction needs to be challenged.

That authority must immediately justify itself to our personal satisfaction.

That ‘I don’t agree with this’ somehow becomes equivalent to ‘I don’t have to follow this.’

And that is where confidence can quietly become entitlement.

The Kargil incident is a good example.

This was not someone arguing with a restaurant because the food was late or with an airline because a bag went missing.

This was a checkpoint in a sensitive region, where restrictions on movement are not unusual and where security considerations may take precedence over individual convenience. Reporting around the incident says the tourists had been waiting for several hours, which explains the irritation but not necessarily the manner in which it was expressed.

There are situations in life where we simply do not have all the information.

Security is one of them.

A person standing at a barricade may know only that they have been inconvenienced.

The people managing that barricade may be dealing with information, risks and responsibilities that the person on the other side cannot see.

That does not mean authorities should never be questioned Of course they should.

Accountability matters.

Power should never become an excuse for arrogance.

But questioning authority and refusing to respect legitimate authority are two very different things.

Perhaps this is where our idea of empowerment needs a little maturity.

Having a voice does not mean ours is always the most important voice in the room.

Having rights does not remove responsibility.

Having confidence does not mean every rule deserves confrontation.

And belonging to a generation certainly does not make an argument stronger.

‘We are Gen Z’ cannot become shorthand for ‘therefore, you must do what we want.’

That is not empowerment.

That is entitlement.

And entitlement is not really about age.

It is about believing that our discomfort should automatically become somebody else’s problem to solve.

Older generations had their own versions of it.

There was a time when people used influence, surname, position or connections to establish importance.

Perhaps every generation finds its own language for saying, Do you know who I am?

The language changes.

The attitude doesn’t.

What I find interesting is that Gen Z has so much going for it.

It is informed.

Articulate.

Digitally connected.

Unusually fearless about calling out what it believes is wrong.

Those are strengths.

But strength without perspective can easily become aggression.

And confidence without humility can become entitlement.

There is a difference between saying:

‘Can you please explain why we are being stopped?’

and

‘Who are you to stop us?’

One asks for accountability.

The other assumes superiority.

That difference matters.

Maybe the real mark of an empowered generation is not that it challenges everything.

It is that it knows what deserves to be challenged, when to challenge it and when the larger situation deserves some respect.

Because maturity is not silent obedience.

But neither is it permanent defiance.

Sometimes maturity is simply understanding that the world cannot always rearrange itself around our inconvenience.

And perhaps the strongest generation will not be the one that says,

‘We will not tolerate this.’

It will be the one wise enough to first ask,

‘Do I understand the full situation before I react?’