Millennials vs Boomers.....young vs old.....fresh vs tempered ....all taking place in a brave new world.
Really, it's all about context.
If this was happening in a more settled context, the whole experience would be different. In this current, actual context there's plenty of reason to discount the Boomers....Things have really changed...I mean REALLY changed. So what's the good of "experience" ? And truly, don't the millennials have them (the boomers) totally all beat?
My dad was a WWII era vet...childhood in the depression, adulthood in the second world war....then the 50's...Eisenhower...prosperity and expansion....That was his context. When he got old and ill, he said to me "nobody wants to deal with an old person"...this was in reference to his health care at the time....I was shocked...he was my father, not an "old person" and of course, everyone cared!!...how could he think that? He totally hated my generation.
But now I'm about that age...and I know exactly what he means....
In this context...today's context...I am pretty darned irrelevant....I don't even have a f'ing Facebook page...nor do I tweet.... I can imagine resenting those youngsters for making me feel worthless like my father must have resented the boomers with their "peace and love" mantra. At the same time I find I'm counting on them (millennials) to come up with something to save their asses....if not mine.
Nevertheless! I am seriously annoyed when I experience those young people dissing me. They do not know everything! I do know some stuff that they should pay attention to! Especially when it comes to negotiating systems, people, and bureaucracy!! I have, you see, been around and failing for a much longer time! I know whereof I speak, so to speak.
This week I have endured, yet again, the experience of two lovely young women, with my best interest at heart, driving me absolutely crazy. I am trying to buy this house. It takes multiple steps. First tricky one is to negotiate the selling price. Next tricky one is please the underwriters. Having done these things before, I totally get it. My "millennial" agent does not. My daughter allies with the agent, her bridesmaid and I feel totally dismissed, disrespected, ignored and discounted.
These kind of interactions (the tricky, house buying ones), interestingly enough, do not rely on modern, electric technology. They rely on people. I have A LOT of experience with people...having worked in public Mental Health. But my millennial lovelies do not credit this. They stall, they bog down, they drag their feet. I want to kill them. They, wide eyed, do not get it.
In the end, of course, I do manage to negotiate a price, and please the underwriters...but only by dueling with my caring supporters...a veritable death struggle...a "to the death" series of moments: feints, parries, thrusts, and finally, the coup d grace! There! I have it!! Ah Ha! Take that!
Jeez Louise!! It shouldn't be this hard! Why can't I get any respect??? I'm old, that's why. I'm not in charge anymore...I'm past my effective date....
And in many ways, that's OK with me. I truly am past my prime "strength". And I'd rather somebody else took on the strenuous stuff...the physical stuff....the repetitive, tedious stuff....it's just that there are some things that I'm better at than those young people...and people probably is one of them. And agencies and bureaucracies and bureaucrats are others...I have REALLY done A LOT of this kind of thing. REALLY. I have not always liked it...but I have done it. Respect my expertise, for goddsake!!
Read some history! (picture the old, grizzled dude shaking his fist on his front porch)
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