Generational Dispute

When I was a kid, I didn’t completely understand why my mom and dad were easily comparing their generation with mine. What I only could understand at the time, that was their way of educating their son to be (always) grateful for not experiencing the struggle while my parents had encountered in their childhood. Since then, I considered that was the norm of what parents usually or even should do as part of teaching a child about life.

As I grow up, keep gaining more information, knowledge, lesson learned, and another notable experiences influencing me to be someone who I am today, I’ve changed my point of view for several aspects, especially related to generational differences. Explicitly, about comparing generation to one another with tendency looking for whose generation is the most superior. That doesn’t sound wise, yet, it can’t be denied that by knowing how the generation before us struggled, also taught us some meaningful life lessons. But hey! let’s go through this discussion further.

To be fair, every generation has their own experiences and challenges. I know that sounds cliche but that’s the nature of human’s life and can’t we just acknowledge that? Also, I didn’t say “strengths and weaknesses” to mention anything regarding attributes or limitations within a generation here as I don’t want my opinion is going to mislead anyone. Thus, that subtle shift in term (hopefully) can help frame this transcription in a way more constructive and less judgemental 😉.

Digging deeper, both objectives are widely defined and notoriously causing such a perpetual “war” at determining whose generation is the best over all. One generation is being compared to the prior one and vice versa. I guarantee that would be endless comparison between the two as it’s led by the egoistical thinking and false sense of superiority of both parties. Thus, it ends up putting them in this dispute for such a long time.

I swear, this whole generational dispute has gotten completely out of hand. It’s like every time I turn around, someone is blaming another generation for ruining the world. Again, it’s like a never-ending cycle of blaming one another. We should be learning from each other instead of wasting energy on these pointless arguments. Honestly, I’m fed up with the constant bickering. Ugh! Can’t we all just coexist without turning everything into a generational war zone?

Here’s the thing - as I previously mentioned, each generation has its own unique CHALLENGES AND EXPERIENCES. We grew up in a different world than our parents, with rapidly evolving technology and a shifting economy. Sure, we might have our quirks, like obsessing over nostalgia or being too heavily proud on our superiority just because we are more updated in this ever-changing world than the generation before us and more mature than the generation after us. Hold on, is that completely true? Come on, we can just stop romanticizing the past with the tendency of our era to be better than the era of the other generation. Why? Let’s take a common example, have you guys ever heard a statement sounds like below? :

“Back in my day, I had neither good nor enough facility to do this and that. Life made me tougher. Look at you! You live in this new era must be grateful and don’t be so weak! Never thought on my mind this new generation is too spoiled with all ease of life they have these days."

I know right, that sounds excessive but it does happen 😏. With that in mind, romanticizing such situation will never be the right solution to be heard well by the younger generation. That only makes the gap gets bigger over time to one another.

I have a brother and we’re 4 years apart. I remember when I frequently argued with him when we were both starting to grow up as teenagers, I always said that him and other teenagers his age are stubborn when given some advices by parents and that actually made him being denial. Nevertheless, time flies and we’re both growing to be a grown-up now, I regret my saying about blindly blaming and generalizing his generation. I wasn’t supposed to say that as I don’t think I’d be happy when my parents used to say the same tone for such generational dispute back then. Anyway, I don’t blame my parents at all since they had considered it as a norm and I completely understand how hard it is to make them accept my opposing perspective. However, I do love and respect them a lot, so being defiant would not make the circumstance better. Back to me and my brother, since then, I understood that I was like my parents and he was me, got judged by non-objective judgement, what being called as “generational dispute”.

And the last but not least, everyone has their own valuable thoughts, unique quirks, interesting experiences and inevitable ever-changing challenges over time, no matter what generation they are. Every generation has its stereotypes, but can we please move beyond these broad generalizations and actually understand each other? We’re all just trying to navigate this crazy world, and I’m frankly saying that I’m extremely tired of being caught in the crossfire of this generational blame game. Let’s bridge the gap, share our experiences, and maybe, just maybe, find some common ground ❤️