“Boomers–What Can We Give the Next Generation?”
On Monday of this week Jim and I visited his daughter Kara, who lives about 45 minutes from us. She is a lovely, complicated, endearing 22 year old who I am delighted to have in my life, never having had children of my own (that I know of). We get along famously, but every now and then I suddenly feel like I’m 85 years old, for God’s sake. Don’t get me wrong — she never intends this response, but there it is, all the same. What’s the demon that rears its ugly head?
Technology — plain and simple. This is the dividing line between generations now, as I see it. When I was her age it was the “generation gap”; code for our rebellion against the old guard’s societal attitudes. Now I ARE the old guard, and I will not go quietly. Here’s the latest of numerous incidents: I just realized this sounds a little disgusting, so try not to get grossed out. I was sitting in Kara’s living room, talking and idly running my hand over the nape of my neck when I felt a bump at my hairline. “Hey — look at this — does this look like something?” I asked Jim and Kara. Well, her first impulse was not to run over and look, but to pick up her digital camera. “Here, I’ll take a picture of it!” She said. I’m sitting there thinking, “What good is that? What’s she going to do — mail it to me? By then it’ll either be gone or I’ll be dead.”
What I actually said was more like, “Huh?” She grabbed the camera and stood up, saying “You know — I’ll take a picture of it, then we can zoom in on it!” I forgot — Digital. No waiting. Zooming in AFTER you shoot. Egad. So that’s what we did, and it looked harmless in close-up; at least I’m not in a coma yet.
I heard a segment on National Public Radio the other day about how this is the first generation that knows more than their parents about everything technological. And with every new advance, we lose ground. I don’t doubt the truth of this for a minute. But the question is — does this mean we have nothing to offer these children of the post-information age? Should we just throw up our hands and wheel ourselves off into the Sunset Retirement Home?
Happily, I do know the answer to that one. Hell, no! There is something which is at the same time the most valuable gift my generation has to offer and also among the least valued by this society. If you said “advice”, you’re close. Personally, I have finally learned this about advice — nobody wants it; they just say they do. So it’s not that. What they do want is answers about life’s challenges, e.g. “How do I get out of THIS one?” “Why do I get so depressed about things?”
Life experience is the only way for young people to feel that they are okay, but they don’t have nearly enough of it yet, and the world they live in is so much more demanding and fast-paced and cynical than the one we knew. We can share our experience with them. But there’s a catch — you can’t provide helpful examples of how you got through something unless you gain some perspective over the years, because chances are you screwed up at their age, too. I know I did.
So it’s only now — now that I have a sensitive young woman in my life who is so like me at her age it’s uncanny — that I realize how far I’ve come. 15 years ago I was still struggling with my own identity. In the interim I looked within and worked at letting go of my need to judge, my inability to forgive, and my mistaken identification with the ego’s idea of who Diane is rather than with my heart’s knowledge.
Now I’m able to say to Kara, “Well, sweetie, I did the same thing when I was your age. I got into trouble for it, and I lost some friends. I finally learned that I’m okay just as I am, and I don’t have to pretend to like what everybody else does just to keep their friendship.” Or whatever the topic is — you get the idea. I’ve also learned to add something my parents rarely, if ever, gave me — unsolicited cheerleading. Maybe it’s BECAUSE I didn’t receive it that I value it so now, but whenever I can I add, “You are such a fabulous person. I know you don’t see it that way yet, but you will. Some day you’ll look back on these days and wonder how you could possibly have underestimated yourself so.”
Don’t we all need to hear that more than we need to know how to use an MP3 player? Interesting, isn’t it, that we still choose, as a culture, to place the public “achievement” (almost always in terms of dollars) above personal triumph over old, dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors?