Ruminating on the Future of the World

That's a pretty huge and imposing title for the small, meandering thing I'm doing this morning as I sit in my garden with the breeze blowing and the birds singing and the sounds of revitalization from the home remodel next door. But, in essence, that's what I'm doing - contemplating the future of the world, something I realize, with each passing year, is only marginally in my hands. Perhaps being in your late 40's automatically nudges you into contemplation of generational differences, and makes you prone to despair if you fall prey to the generational gap mindset, the "what's wrong with kids today" thinking. On the other hand, being in the sandwich generation caught between aging parents and adult children while shouldering the responsibilities and burdens of maturity (mortgage, career, your own first hints of health issues and mortality) can make you more desirous to understand the other generations, and more aware of the fact that you, like your parents, will one day fade and be replaced by those young adults.

I work alongside colleagues who are the same age as my stepson, the young man I helped raise. My peers grieve the loss of their parents. Some of my peers succumb to heart disease and other early vanguards of our own aging bodies. Having been a young adult during the AIDS epidemic, I have had some prior experience confronting mortality, but back then I could rage against it, whereas now I see it for what it is - the inevitable truth for all of us.

That may sound bleak, but it's just realistic. It's realistic to acknowledge that your parents will die, and you will die, and that means thinking about what will be left. What will your legacy be? Who will be left to tend the garden of the world? Suddenly, the natural parental worrying you engage in as you think about your now-grown child (Will they find happiness? Will they make their way in the world? Have I given them the tools they need? Will they find someone to love, someone who loves them? Who will they be today, tomorrow, next year, in ten years' time, when I am gone?) expands to become questions about that child's entire generation, and how they will shape the future, what kind of world you will leave them and what they will do with that world.

I stepped into this reflecting pool of questions this morning through a strange route. The soil of my brain was already well primed, as I've been reading a book by Jon Savage called TEENAGE: THE CREATION OF YOUTH CULTURE. Then, my husband and I have been wrestling with the evolving relationship between us and our son, who just turned 29 and is no doubt wrestling with his own special challenges as he faces that milestone. I sat down with my cup of coffee in the garden and began to read an article in the New York Times about the recently released Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and was struck by one paragraph that began "Now 28."

Now 28. The same age as my stepson (until a month ago). The same age as my new colleague at work. The Millenial Generation is taking the stage. And, despite vast differences in the surface facts of their lives, there was some underlying shape to Sgt. Bergdahl's journey and struggles to find his way in the world that struck a familiar chord.

I stopped reading the article. I thought about this new generation, their lives and experiences - the self-esteem movement, the attacks of 9-11, the deep economic recession, Hurricane Katrina, the debate on climate change, the digital age, the first African-American president. I went online and started scanning the vast collection of articles attempting to understand this generation. There were some common threads, some things that rang true, some wide discrepancies and conflicting accounts. There was a great deal of speculation, and a certain amount of earnest hope.

I started thinking about this ritual we engage in - naming a generation, seeking to codify it, to predict how it will behave, how to engage with it, how to mobilize it, how it will change our world. We know, from history, that our world changes. We of a certain age are old enough to testify to that first hand, just as our parents have ("When I was a kid ...." "Remember when ....") and their parents before them. We vacillate between fear or despair in the future and hope. Despair always reaches for me. I choose hope. It's harder to choose.

The world has many problems, many causes for despair. It always has. Maybe at some point, the ability to change those problems can only come from a new generation. Not because the previous generations have failed. They haven't. But this world of ours will always, by its very nature, be a work in progress, and in constant flux, a perpetual balancing act. Previous generations have brought about amazing and wonderful changes, and sometimes unintended bad consequences and misguided steps, and some downright bad decisions. So has my own generation. We're all just experimenting, and we always begin that process under the conviction of youth, the conviction that we're right. Maybe we'd never have the guts to experiment otherwise. A new generation can see our work with fresh eyes. They can envision things that may simply be outside our view.

So, this morning, from the sunshine and shadow of my garden, I send out prayers and blessings to the next generation as, step by step, they take their place center stage and, piece by piece, they take the world into their hands. Like a first bike ride, we won't let go too soon, and we might even hang on too long. Our parents are behind us doing the same. When we do let go, we'll keep watching, anxious, cheering, worrying, trying somehow to steer when we no longer can, wincing when they fall and encouraging them to get back up, until eventually they disappear around the corner and out of view.

The Paradox of Age

I've been thinking about youth - the energy, confusion, struggles, and amazing vision that can come with being young, specifically that strange period from roughly 18 to 30.  I seem to have a number of people in my life right now who are in this age range, and I am constantly amazed, in awe and sometimes frustrated by them.

Full disclosure, I am 47, closing in on 48 (this week!).  I sometimes feel like a dinosaur, though my older friends would, of course, dispute that fact.  I have entered the stage of life when you fall effortlessly into lengthy conversations that begin with the words "Remember when."  The impulse to reminisce seems very powerful at this point in my life.  I engage in a lot of involuntary grunting and other vocalizations when I get up off the couch or out of the car. I'm in good shape, and yet I seem to have a variety of random injuries and odd health quirks that were never there before. Most of the time, in my head, I don't feel so very different from who I was when I was younger. Then something will happen that pulls me up short and reminds me how very different the view looks from here, and how very different the pilot of this ship called my body is now. The agitated struggle feels calmer, the reality of mortality more inevitable, the truth of physical limitations undeniable, the need for approval less insatiable, the warm glow of small joys burnished brighter by time.

Recently, there have been a spate of articles about various generations - Generation X, the Boomers, the Millenials, and other labels I haven't fully retained because I've come to the conclusion that they are just that - arbitrary labels. The sad thing about attempting to draw these careful generational distinctions is that it seems to be giving in to the worst of our human tendency to define, and segregate, ourselves by our differences. These generational articles all seem to amount to mud slinging from one generation to another.

I see it in myself, the way I sometimes get unreasonably annoyed by a new fashion trend (cutesy animal hats on adults, for example), or inestimably frustrated by a particular  attitude of someone younger than me, or a younger person's failure to grasp or understand some part of who I am. It is the nature of youth to push, to question, to demand, to assume, to point out what it sees as the failings of the older generation, and to have knowledge gaps that prevent a full understanding of that generation. On the other hand, it is the nature of age to see youth from the outside and find fault in what is essentially a work in progress. The hard won knowledge and experience that comes from sticking around life long enough to reach middle age or old age is something we demand acknowledgment for, and burn to share. Meanwhile, the younger generation demands the chance to prove its strengths and talents, and craves the ability to strike out on its own and define itself separate from the influence of the elders, at the very moment when those elders most crave recognition and acknowledgment of their acquired experience.

How can these two sides ever come together? Really, truth be told, it's more than two sides. What we're talking about is a prism, a diamond, its many faces made up of the many different perspectives that come not only from different time periods but different  circumstances and personalities. When we are able to let go of the us vs. them attitude and reach out across the gaps of years to connect with people from a wide range of ages, our lives can be so much richer. I envy and celebrate the incredible energy and optimism and can-do attitude of youth. I honor and rejoice in the depth of knowledge and the courage and wisdom only evident in seniors. I cannot help laughing and marveling at the special perspectives of children. My world is made better by the connections I have with people from every age.

Stepping Outside Your Age Zone

When I was in my early twenties, I always felt I had something to prove.  Too often I thought everyone older than me was looking down their noses at me, questioning what I could possibly bring to the table.  Left to my own devices, most of my friends were within my age range.  I'm sure my bristly desire to prove myself was annoying.

Now I'm in my late forties, and I see the generation gap with a different light.  I want my experience recognized.  I want to share what I've learned with others.  When I run into the age gap via movie references, technology or other experiences, I pull up short, nonplussed by this unexpected disconnect.  I have an odd need to point the disconnect out to others when it happens.  I suspect this is annoying, too.

However, I'm developing a real appreciation for the value of connecting with people of different ages and experience levels.  After all, every one of us has the potential to experience life at a variety of ages.  There is a common foundation there.

A younger person's perspective actually heightens the flavor of my own youthful experiences.  It gives me new insight into that version of myself, and reminds me of things I don't want to lose.  It's healthy for my mind and emotions, whether that perspective is an 8 year old or a 28 year old or something in between.  The effort to understand that person's viewpoint and learn from them provides an excellent antidote to encroaching codgerdom and judgmental stereotyping.

On the other hand, my relationships with folks older than me have taken on a new kind of poignance and significance, as the distance between myself and them shrinks.  The outer container of face and body loses some of its relevance.  I'm more keenly aware of the existence of an entire lifetime of memories inside that person.

Beyond the one-sided benefits, there is a certain positive, engaging creative chemistry born from cross-age interactions of all sorts.  When the generational walls come down and we actually connect on some other common ground (literature, writing, favorite activities, music, family), the best of every contributing age seasons the soup that is our shared humanity.

We humans tend to hang with people our own age.  It's hard to understand people who are at a different stage of life.  But there's much to be gained when you step outside your age zone.