or Just a Case of Mutual Misunderstanding?
I am now in my much-retired mode, which apparently qualifies me to dispense wisdom, whether solicited or otherwise. But I have run into a small identity crisis. What is my generation code? And what about my daughters, now in their thirties? Gen Y? Millennials? Or have they been upgraded to a version I haven’t yet downloaded?
I grew up in a world where money was scarce, telephones had wires, and a parent’s “Its dark now, come home and study” was the end of the conversation. Today, a simple “No” may trigger a discussion on boundaries, emotional safety and childhood trauma. In our time, we called it getting on with life. Perhaps we were resilient. Perhaps we simply lacked the vocabulary. Or the Wi-Fi.
We wanted our children to have everything we never had. Better schools, more choices, fewer disappointments. Somewhere along the way, we may have forgotten that learning to live without something is also part of growing up. We gave them wings and then looked rather alarmed when they decided to fly in a direction we hadn’t approved.
We encouraged them to think independently, question authority and challenge convention. They listened. Now they question our authority, challenge our conventions and occasionally treat our advice as unsolicited content to be skipped.
The nerve of it!
We believed adulthood meant a stable job, a house, a marriage and money in the bank. Our children seem to regard these as optional features in life’s subscription package. They are prone to change jobs, and embark on hundred mile car rides on weekends in pursuit of ‘fulfilment’. We call it restlessness. They call it knowing their worth. I suppose both descriptions depend on which side of the dinner table you occupy.
Technology has widened the gulf. They inhabit a universe of reels, stories and disappearing messages. I still believe a good conversation should last longer than a reel. But then, I remember our own youthful escapes into books, radio and daydreams. Perhaps every generation has its preferred method of avoiding reality.
And here is the uncomfortable bit. We cannot spend years telling our children to be fearless, independent and original, and then complain when they refuse to become smaller versions of ourselves.
We may also have mistaken our own survival strategies for universal truths. What worked for us was shaped by our times. What works for them must contend with theirs. Experience deserves respect, certainly. But it does not come with a lifetime monopoly on wisdom.
So, in my much-retired mode, I propose a truce. I shall continue offering advice, preferably before anyone asks for it. My daughters shall continue listening, preferably without checking their phones. Neither expectation is likely to be fully met.
Perhaps the generation gap is simply the distance between the world we grew up in and the world our children are trying to make. We see their choices through the lens of our past; they see our advice through the prism of a future we cannot entirely imagine.
And perhaps that is how it should be.
After all, every generation thinks the next one is getting it wrong. The next one, meanwhile, is busy wondering how the previous one ever managed to get anything right!
The trick, I suspect, is not to close the generation gap. It is to keep the conversation going across it. Preferably without turning it into a family WhatsApp debate.
In musing……………. Shakti Ghosal
