I think I owe you an apology. You have a trickier path to walk than I did. In all areas of life it seems. As a child, I played at the playground without worry of “stranger danger”. I slid down impossibly steep metal slides that burned your ass on the way down, swung on swings with rusty, non-vinyl covered chains, and rode on the merry-go-round as long as the older kids would push it around. I had four channels to pick from and it was everything in the world to wait for 8:00 on Saturday night to see who would be the special guest stars on The Love Boat. I was alive for the birth of the “blockbuster” and movies were still such an event since they didn’t release new ones every week demanding your attention and dollars. And I had John Hughes movies.
When I played with my friends it wasn’t an event called a “play-date” with pre-planned snacks, keeping in mind everyone’s allergies. Sure I still was playing with the occasional lead painted toy and went to an elementary school stuffed full with asbestos, but everyone has their challenges.
Now every generation thinks the generation before them just doesn’t understand them, and I think that’s true and part of how one becomes an adult. That process of discovering that for all our differences, we’re really very much the same. The cool part is though that the “younger generation” does get stuff just a little bit differently, a little bit better, because their parents are raising them just a little bit differently than their own parents. The difference for you, and the aspect I didn’t have to deal with, was being labeled a generation so young.
They came up with the name for my generation late in my growing up time and they didn’t even know what we were yet so they just labeled us X. So in one sense, at least you got a defining name. Although for me, personally, not being able to be defined is just lovely. We were a transition generation possibly more so than others. They say we don’t feel like a generation, “even though they are one”. We had the Vietnam war and the Cold War. We had some tragic events, but not like the earlier generations. And while technology was making leaps and bounds, social media was an infant.
I knew MTV when they actually played music videos. You had MTV1, MTV2, and MTV3, and they mostly played reality shows. We didn’t have “smart” classrooms and we still diagrammed sentences. We were the last of the standard skill and drill education. I listened to my favorite radio station and hoped to hear my favorite song. You had MP3 players and satellite radio with stations dedicated to specific music.
We were also the last to grow up without being defined while we doing the growing up. I do not envy you the load you carry. You have taken standardized tests forever and have been surveyed more than other generations, at least to my humble knowledge. I would be sick of filling in the little round bubbles too. I had to know my social security number because it was the magic key to all things at college. Your social security number is protected by the “student ID #”, lest there is a really good hacker. Your parents have tried to give you everything, and, in the process, you may have missed some key paths on the road to adulthood.
I know this doesn’t apply to all of you. I know you get frustrated by being lumped together. I know you are not afraid of challenges. I know you want to solve the problem on your own, but your mom logged into your college learning management system and emailed the professor before you had a chance to go to the office hours and discuss the situation. I know you are more comfortable texting and using social media with your friends than I am. I know you are also perfectly capable of holding a lovely conversation about a wider variety of topics than I could at your age.
You are more world-aware than I was in my teens and twenties. Hell, in my teens, the only world awareness I had was the 80s British New Wave invasion and what I learned from Live Aid. But I didn’t have the world at my fingertips through Google. I had newspapers, magazines, and the very powerful MTV news delivered by those beloved VJs. I can’t imagine how tired you must feel at times trying to determine where to give your attention to and for how long and with how much passion.
We were talking about you tonight at church. How do we share with you the ways in which we, the church, are still relevant in your life? How do we share with you that not all churches are fundamentalist churches? How do we share with you that we could be a meaningful part of your life? I better stop there with the questions…don’t like to abuse the rhetorical question device.
I look at my sons. Their mom is a Gen Xer and their dad is a Baby Boomer. They have already been dubbed Generation Z. I know the term helicopter parent only too well so I avoid being that as much as possible. I tell my youngest when he gets his little league trophy that he’s getting it for showing up. I don’t want him to think that there are only winners. I want them both to learn how to cope with losing now so they have time to develop that skill. I want my sons to know that you have to earn things, learn things. I know you know that too, Millennial, but we forget that sometimes because we’re trying to catch up and absorb things the way you do. You have always had multiple media outlets to compare and use to shape your views, in addition to what your family has shaped in you. I still turn to an encyclopedia first-and then remember I could Google it. Maybe we don’t want to be left behind as you forge ahead in this very different world that isn’t that different. Maybe we think it’s so different because it’s not the same as what I, and the generations before, had access to. To you, it’s perfectly normal to Google something. It’s your first resource. To me, I have to remind myself. To the older generations, they may not even own a computer and are still wondering why they now have to pay so much money for cable just to watch the local news.
Information is power…when I was little, knowledge was power and I learned it every Saturday morning when School House Rock played in between Saturday morning cartoons (the only day the good cartoons were on…no Cartoon Network). But information has replaced knowledge, I fear. Actually, my fear is that a little information has replaced knowledge. But I didn’t grow up in your world. I grew up in the heyday of broadcast television, event movies, and newspapers for that serious stuff in life.
We sort of slipped by the bean counters. But man, Millennial, they love counting beans related to you. I’m sorry that fell to your shoulders. I suppose the information highway helped with that. While I was playing Space Invaders on my Atari, they got the World Wide Web ready for you. And it got filled up fast. And they started watching you like hawks. How do they interact with ______? How do they interact with each other with _______? It’s no wonder you text each other while sitting next to each other-at least no one will ask you about what you are texting about and why and when and what for….
So gentle Millennial, chin up. You’re starting to look more and more like an adult to us…the ones who like to study you. And a bunch of us, Gen X, Boomer, Greatest, and GI generations combined, are less interested in studying you and instead simply getting to know you. So come inside. Get to know us. I promise- no survey bubbles up my sleeve. Talk with us. Have a conversation. Help us learn how to not pigeon-hole Generation Z. Help us learn from our very recent history how to not drive away the very ones we’re trying to make it better for.
Love,
A Gen Xer
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