Confound it young people today…
You know it is true.
Today’s Generation Gap….not exactly like the generation gap of the 1960s and ’70s…but no less a gap. Our parents didn’t understand us and we didn’t understand them.
Boomers may not agree with this statement – but we are annoying to young people. Yeah – an annoyance just like our parents were to us. They don’t understand us – and we do not understand them. We do things differently than Millennials and GEN Zers and they do things differently than us. Yet – how were we any different 50 years ago than what they are today?
When I watch video footage from the Hippy era, Woodstock, Berkley, the war protests, the freaks, free love, and the evening news with Walter Cronkite, I am reminded there’s little difference between us and the Millennials we are so critical of.
When we were young, we didn’t have what our parents had and that was experience. We had not yet been around the block and had little respect for their wisdom. Our parents, teachers, and mentors knew what we didn’t know because they’d been there. Even with the best rearing and proper example, we had to go out there and try life on for size. We tried things our parents would never approve of. We stumbled in hopes of learning something from our judgment. Others of us have struggled all of our lives in the game of education and survival.
I’ve found we can bemoan our “luck” or instead examining what we’ve learned from experience. It is never too late to turn the ship around and chart a better path. This is what young people are up against today. Like youthful boomers a lifetime ago, they have to go out in the world and find their own way. When we were young, we were self-absorbed – which was our survival instinct at work. Children are, by nature, self-absorbed to survive – self-preservation.
Empathy and love tend to be learned behavior. Some of us learn both while others are born with it. When we are born with empathy and love in our souls, we automatically reach out to help others without even thinking about it. What happens to others affects us so deeply. Others, who’ve never learned empathy and love, ask “What’s in it for me?”
What I know from life experience is you cannot fake these elements. They are either learned or born into us from conception. For the young, self-absorption is an integral part of growing. In time, we learn the importance of giving or spend our lives doing a lot of taking. I’ve found I get greater reward from serving others even when it becomes a thankless task.
When I look at today’s youth and the youth we were what seems like yesterday, I find there’s little difference in the generations. Like us, they will spend a lifetime learning from their experiences and – hopefully – make the world a better place.
Boomer Journey... 