The Last Generation

I was nostalgically referring to the old days with my class recently. No doubt using what has become one of my signature lines, “Back in the day...” (My students recognize the irony of their 27 year old teacher saying this on such a regular basis, which leads to a chuckle each time I utter it.) And during one of these rants, I was asked,

“What was so great about the era that you grew up in?”

It was a solid question, and this is one of the reasons I love teaching so much; you never know when you are going to get asked a question that will invade your thoughts for days. You are constantly caused to challenge everything you say in order to present accurate information. More simply put, you have to be able to back up your words and your opinions.

So what did make my generation so great? The more I thought about it, the more pride and appreciation I felt toward the the era in which I grew up.

It’s hard to argue that “The Greatest Generation” wasn’t the greatest generation. And from my perspective, it’s hard to beat “The Baby Boomer Generation” as the most interesting time to be alive, but there is something special about my era.

Every generation has its unique identity. This identity is influenced by so many factors. Some are as obvious as a war and some are as subtle as a song on the radio. A culture is created through these happenings. Eventually each generation has its trademark moment, it’s historical references, it’s music, prominent figures, etc.

And each has its own childhood.

During the days I was pondering this question, I found myself discussing the issues facing today’s students with a colleague. We were talking about and how much more serious these issues are when compared to those common in our own eras.

Today’s youth are some of the most interesting people you will ever meet. I am fascinated by them each and every day. There are so many levels to them. They are an incredibly complicated generation. They are deep thinkers who are given so much to think about, perhaps too much. They have information everywhere they look. Material is being presented to them at an astonishing rate.

They may not always know a lot about something, but they know something about a lot. They are easily the most informed generation with the answer to any question literally at their fingertips.

They are also the first generation to be robbed of their innocence by the internet.

They are the first generation to have the answers before the questions. What I mean by this is that we grew up ‘living’ and experiencing until a catalyst of some sort piqued our interest. Eventually, we came across something we didn’t understand. We had a question that couldn’t be answered, and then we asked. And if the question wasn’t organically provoked by circumstance, we didn’t ask the question. It was as simple as that. We acquired information as we needed it and at a natural, manageable rate. Today’s children are presented information rather than seeking it out, and they can stumble upon it by a simple click of a blue word.

Technology has made them an intriguing, exceptional, and contradictory group of people.

They are the greatest masters of communication in history. They are also the greatest failures of communication. In many ways, they are more mature at their age than anyone else in history while also being the least mature in just as many ways.

During this conversation with my colleague, we tried to pinpoint the difference between this generation and the previous ones. We also compared our own. Though a significant age gap existed between our generations, we had a great deal of similarities. We eventually came to the conclusion that my generation’s childhood was the end of an era, and like many generations, it is one of lasts. We were the last kids to grow up in a world where you could play football and hockey in the streets until the sun set, and then when it became too dark, could turn on flashlights and play tag into the night (‘Scorch’, as we called it). We were the last generation to knock on doors in the neighborhood to round up enough people to play games. We were the last to have entire neighborhoods as playgrounds. We still built forts in abandoned lots. We heard our parents call for dinner from the front porch.

We were the last generation to have all walked into schools without metal detectors. We still looked forward to a line-up of four good natured T.V. shows on Friday nights as the signature event of the week. We were the last to answer phone calls without knowing who was calling, to not be able to get a hold of someone directly, and to call a girl’s house and have to ask if so-and-so is available. We were the last to grow up and not be able to check where everyone is at any given time. We were the last to memorize phone numbers. We were the last to have to make detailed plans to meet up with a group and not be able to just call someone when you couldn’t find the meeting point or were running late.

We wrote notes the night before school and folded them perfectly and then had to wait until the morning to deliver them. And we even did it face to face (most of the time). We were the last to have blank cassette tapes ready to record music off the radio. We were the last to make mixed tapes. We were the last to go to drive-in movie theatres and theatres that weren’t in malls.

We were the last to have to ask another person questions about puberty and sex. We were the last to have to call friends or wait until school the next day if we forgot what our homework assignment was. We were the last to write papers longhand. We were the last to assume our parents would give the final word to the teacher. We were the last to depend on our parents and older siblings’ CD collection for music. We were the last to buy CD’s at a store, and for that matter, the last to have to own a song to listen to it. We were the last to have cords attached to controllers and computers that weren’t portable. We were the last to live in houses that didn’t have a computer at all. We were the last to use VCR’s and not be able to watch a T.V. show on our time schedule. We were the last to have to wait to tell someone something. We were the last to see a paperboy. We were the last to depend on our parents and trusted friends for answers. And we were the last to take someone’s word for it.

Kids today have so many advantages brought about by advancements in technology. I can no longer imagine living in a world without the internet. It is such a vital part of my daily life, but I feel lucky to have lived in a world before it, if for no other reason than to be able to compare the two worlds. But it is much more than that. I feel lucky because of all the things I didn’t have to do. I didn’t have to express and interpret emotions in emoticons. I didn’t have to wade through, or surf, through the internet at such a vulnerable age. I didn’t have to worry about being bullied even when no one was in sight. I didn’t have to learn at such a young age how few people can really be trusted fully. And I didn’t have to ask questions after getting answers.

And I could just play without having to feel like I was missing out on something--like the world was going on without me online.

People will always be owned by possessions, but now we are owned by a need to know and be in the know. We are owned by our fear of missing something.

Furthermore, technology has taken a complicated world and made it sophisticatedly complicated. It also made it possible to inflict harm in crueller and more sinister ways. Schoolyard fights were largely on the way out by the time I hit school, and I am not an advocate for physical violence by any means. However, which is worse: a fight on the playground or a public slandering on the web?

So many of the issues today have ties to technology, and specifically the internet. We give kids all the information and technology to be independent and mature, and we give them all the tools to communicate in such a manner, but we often fail to teach them how to communicate. Technology progressed and progressed and it all happened faster than parenting, teaching, and even the law could keep up with. We made a world that allows kids to talk incredibly easily and preferably without seeing each other. We put to rest the hallmarks of our own childhood for the sake of progress. Somewhere along the way it was forgotten that you can’t rush youth, and you shouldn’t try.


I grew up in the last generation before the internet-- a time when you had to talk to people landline to landline, paper note to paper note, face to face.

I grew up in the era before the world changed forever. Every generation remembers their own childhood to be a simpler, not easier, but simpler time than the one that follows, but that may never be truer than in this case.


I grew up in the last generation without all the answers.

…and that just may be the answer right there.





Note: In the coffee shop right now as I write this: 20 people, 7 exposed phones, 2 audible Facebook conversations, a couple next to me who has not spoken a word to each other in 25 minutes as they both thumb through their phones, and my favorite quote: “I just don’t understand what Susan means by this post.”

;)

My Best Self (Being alone in a crowded room)

I recommend listening to this song while reading this post.





A good friend of mine recently brought up the idea of being your ‘best self’. I’ve sort of been hooked on that concept in the days since.

What is our best self?

The idea inherently suggests that we have a self that we do not consider our best. A self that perhaps we are not proud of, or maybe one that we are not as comfortable with. Why does this self make us uncomfortable? Is it an issue of perception and subsequent judgment? Is it this judgment that we are uncomfortable with or even fear? Is it the specific people who are judging? While thinking about it, it is probably important to recognize that the initial judgment is our own, for we judge which self we are or were at the time--our best, or the person who is beneath that.

So this ‘best self’ of mine. Who is he? Is he the one that is confident? Is he the one that is outgoing? Is he the funny one? The one that other people like to be around? The winner? The one who sounds smart, or says the right things at the right time? The one who knows when to say nothing and listen? If I manage to embody any of these qualities, does that put me at my best?


I was at a cocktail party recently and while at a table seemingly involved in conversation with others, I couldn’t take my eyes off a man in the room. He walked around. That’s what he did. He walked around, never stopping, fearful that someone might notice that he was with no one. He shifted his hands from his pockets to his side and back to his pockets, in a subconscious routine. He walked with an over-exaggerated purpose, and I watched. I watched because I knew exactly what he was feeling, as I have been there countless times. So I sat at my table occasionally dropping a one-liner to appear engaged, but I couldn’t stop watching this man, alone in a crowded room.

Eventually, I lost track of him.

But I looked for him still, hoping that he had found his niche, but knowing that he most likely excused himself from the party.

It all reminded me of a novel I read, in which the author wrote of the evolution of communication. She divided the growth into ages. One she called “The Age of silence”. In it, she spoke of moments like this, the moments in which we feel uncomfortable. She called upon the reader to think about their hands in those situations and how we never know what to do with them, how they feel as though they are foreign to us. She suggested that this was our hands remembering an age before spoken communication. How they are longing to communicate, but we simply don’t know how to use this tool or perform this act anymore. We have evolved past it, but we still occasionally get caught between that and, well, words.

Maybe we evolved too far, or maybe we just think too much. We want to find the right words at the right time. We want to be our best self.

Again, who is my best self?

He is the guy who is honest. He gets uncomfortable at times, but he recognizes it, and he recognizes that others do too. He doesn’t second guess himself because he doesn’t need to if he is genuine and authentic, and he knows that if he is being either of these things, then he is being himself. That is the best self. The honest one.




“If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms - and you find yourself at a loss for what do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body - it's because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less. ”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love


“When will you learn that there isn’t a word for everything?”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love


“Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love