Talkin' 'Bout Your Generations

Dear baby boomers and millennials,

Over the last couple of years, a narrative has emerged that pits your two generations against each other .  You baby boomers complain that millennials are entitled, lazy, self-centered, and ruining traditional institutions and businesses.  You millennials respond that baby boomers are at fault for the sad state of our world, our politics, and basically everything.

I'll admit that I found this conflict entertaining for a while, but it's frankly getting a little bit old, so I think it may be time for the folks stuck in the middle of all this to speak up.

Hey there, remember us?  We're Generation X.

You baby boomers should remember us.  There was a time when you couldn't stop talking about us.  You didn't have a lot of good things to say about us, but you sure talked about us a lot.  You called us underachievers.  You called us "slackers".  Heck, yo even made a movie about us called "Slacker".  You gave us the name "Generation X" in part to represent how unknowable and uncertain our future was. We saw plenty of newspaper and magazine articles back then that told us we were going to be "the first generation to have a lower standard of living than their parents".

Sound familiar, millennials?  It's a little bit hard to find online ( because a lot of the magazines and newspapers back then never published online ), but believe me when I tell you that baby boomers were saying the same things about Gen X 25 years ago that they are saying about millennials today.

According to boomer pundits in the early 90's, the Gen X generation was destined to struggle, but I think we turned out OK.  If you're a millennial, there's a pretty good chance that your boss ( or maybe your boss's boss ) is a Gen X-er.  Maybe I'm just patting myself on the back here, and maybe it's just a reflection of the Gen X people I happen to know, but just about Gen X-er I know is doing fine.  Obviously not everyone is doing fine, and there are people struggling in all generations, but I see no reason to believe that any new generation has ever been doomed.  In 25-years, a lot of us Gen X-ers will be retired ( or at the end of their career ) and you millennials will be running the world.

All that said, I do have one thing to get off my chest regarding millennials.  There was time when Gen X was the hot new generation, and now we seem to be largely forgotten ( or completely forgotten? ) and millennials get all the media attention.  I've got to admit that I'm a little jealous of you guys because of that ( either that, or the fact that you guys don't have to get out of bed to pee at 3 in the morning ).

OK, so let get back to the boomers.  I'm know you might be kinda pissed of at me at this at point because I have pretty much been taking the millennials side in this conflict, but I hope you can remember a time when you were in the millennials' shoes.  After all, this song was written for your generation:




The song My Generation came to mind when I was trying to come up with a title for this post, but it's actually not the song that most sums up the theme of this blog post.  I think the song the best expresses what I'm trying to say in this post is another song that a lot of baby boomers might remember:



In case it isn't clear, the key line in this song that I'd like to highlight is ...

Why can't they be like we were,
Perfect in every way?
What's the matter with kids today?

I've always loved that lyric because of its timelessness.  In the play/movie, the character who sings that line is a member of the Greatest Generation singing about the baby boomer generation, but it is really a line that could be sung by any older generation about the younger generation.

The story never changes.  Each young generations gets criticized by older generations and then grows up and criticizes the generations that follow it.

"What is it with these kids and that crazy new music?"
"Why are these kids spending so much time in front of the TV ( the "boob tube" )?"
"Why are these kids playing so many video games?"
"Why are these kids spending so much time on that internet thing?"
"Why are kids faces always buried in their phones?"

So, I hope you boomers can remember that you were once the brash young generation that your parents' didn't understand, and I hope you millennials will have some empathy with the younger generation when you become old and crotchety, because it's more than likely that you're not going to die before you get old.

Rich