My daughter recently brought to
my attention an article entitled “Why Generation Y is unhappy”. The hard
hitting, yet humorous piece, tells the story of Lucy, a member of Generation Y.
Who is Generation Y? They are children
born in the late 1970s to mid-1990s. Defined as a group of youth who, not only know
that they are special, but who are, in fact, the main protagonists of their own
very special story of life. It is assumed that being the central character of
their own special story, Generation Y is a happy lot. Wrong, they are not. This
is worked out by the following very simple formula:
Happiness = Reality – Expectations
(Equals ) (Minus)
Interpretation: when the reality
of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they are happy. When
reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they are unhappy.
According to the article, the
context to this unhappiness has its roots in the following explanation.
Generation Y are children of the
Baby Boomers born in the 1950s (and later!!) to Lucy’s grandparents who had
experienced the Great Depression and World War II (to put it in context, the
effects of World War II was a shared experience in Africa. Colonialism was
another). These collective experiences made Lucy’s grandparents obsessed with
economic security. They therefore raised Lucy’s parents to build practical
secure careers like banking, law, teaching and medicine. The virtue of hard
work was drilled into them.
Hard work with time = success
(equaled)
Lucy’s parents followed the
script and true to their parents word, the world beckoned. As the 70s, 80s and 90s rolled along, the
world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Lucy’s parents did
even better than they expected which left them feeling gratified and
optimistic. With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their
own parents, Lucy’s parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and unbounded
possibility. This was a universal phenomenon. Baby Boomers in the West, the
East and Africa told their Generation Y children, they could be whatever they
wanted to be. As they did this, they instilled the special protagonist identity
deep within their children.
To be clear, the article points
out, Generation Y want economic prosperity just like their parents do but
something else is happening too. There is a second message Lucy has been given
and that is you are special. She has been told this repeatedly. And to what
effect? The message has made Generation Y
delusional. They believe that they and they alone are unusually wonderful. This
feeling of being unusually wonderful lends itself to feelings of entitlement. Could this explain the attitude of our youth today? Thrown into this general
confusion, it would appear that somewhere along the line, even Baby Boomer
parents have bought into the narrative that, because they have worked so hard,
the world owes both them and their children.
However, what Baby Boomers know and
should, as a matter of urgency, inculcate in their little bundles of joy, is
that the world is not an easy place to be and the weird thing about life and careers,
is that, they are actually quite hard. Therefore, while we wildly celebrate our
babies admissions into celebrated disciplines like law, engineering, medicine
and the like, we must continually remind them that it will take years of blood,
sweat and tears to build to levels of success. It will not happen over-night.
The article ends with three valuable
pieces of advice to Generation Y:
Do not shy away from ambition.
Remain wildly ambitious. Just remember the specific direction may be unclear
but it will work itself out.
Stop thinking that you are
special – the fact is right now, you are not. You are just another completely
inexperienced young person who doesn’t have that much to offer yet. You can
become special by working really hard for a long time.
Ignore everyone else. The phrase
about other people’s grass being greener is not a new one but in today’s “instagrammic”
imaging world, other people’s grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as
indecisive, self-doubting and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your
thing, you will never have reason to envy others.
Lastly, to Generation Y, on
behalf of all the Baby Boomer parents, I apologise for the role we have played
in creating a delusional world for you. In our defence, we wanted the best for
you. Now you know, if you didn’t already, even we get it wrong.
