I have faith in the future. I have faith in the next generation. I have faith in millennials.
Not everyone agrees. Millennials get verbally abused for not sticking with a project, not showing up on time, not following through. Those are stereotypes, like many others, based on incidents that cause us to project one person’s qualities onto another.
Every generation has its weaknesses and its positive points. As a baby boomer, I often wonder what our generation has done to make this world a better place. Our group can easily be criticized.
Now that we’re closing in old codger status, the fashionable statement is to criticize the millennials. I don’t agree with that perspective. I believe in the next generation and what they bring to the table. They will (and do) approach issues, work and play differently than previous generations because the circumstances of their lives have been different.
They’ve grown up with newer technologies, the ability to download data at their fingertips. That gives them unique access to information we never had, and as they master the knowledge base available to them, the opportunity to step up and solve some of our seemingly intractable problems grows. I have faith they will come up with solutions to some of the complex worldwide problems we face.
I came to these personal beliefs several years ago. My wife and I were out to dinner with two of our kids as they attended college. They brought along several friends. We’d been around their friends and roommates multiple times, but for some reason the evening was different.
The conversation crossed the threshold from one of those “catch up on the day conversations” to a more cerebral one involving engineering and physics that they were addressing in their respective classes. We sat riveted. Within seconds my head spun. I could not follow the conversation.
As they related to each other, asking questions, pontificating, suggesting ideas, discussing equations and in general talking about things I knew nothing about, it hit me that the world will be in good hands with them. They’ve learned and assimilated a ton of complex subjects and have the ability to synthesize it and propose unique ways to apply it in the years ahead.
One could argue this is a small subset of millennials, and that would be correct. But the bigger point to me is that there are a lot of young adults in the world who have the drive and educational background to change the course of trends that need correcting.
It won’t be easy. They’ll face walls and naysayers like anyone does who works towards change.
Many people complain about change, not wanting to modify personal behavior or actions. Change though is going to be how we clean up the world’s plastic pollution and dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in the decades ahead.
One of our biggest problems today is changing how we see others, opening up to something that may clash with our personal world view. I suggest a step for us baby boomers to question how we see the millennial generation. Let’s listen and hear what they have to say, and couple their early-in-life knowledge with our own. The opportunity is there to grow together in ways we’ve never seen before.
Not everyone agrees. Millennials get verbally abused for not sticking with a project, not showing up on time, not following through. Those are stereotypes, like many others, based on incidents that cause us to project one person’s qualities onto another.
Every generation has its weaknesses and its positive points. As a baby boomer, I often wonder what our generation has done to make this world a better place. Our group can easily be criticized.
Now that we’re closing in old codger status, the fashionable statement is to criticize the millennials. I don’t agree with that perspective. I believe in the next generation and what they bring to the table. They will (and do) approach issues, work and play differently than previous generations because the circumstances of their lives have been different.
They’ve grown up with newer technologies, the ability to download data at their fingertips. That gives them unique access to information we never had, and as they master the knowledge base available to them, the opportunity to step up and solve some of our seemingly intractable problems grows. I have faith they will come up with solutions to some of the complex worldwide problems we face.
I came to these personal beliefs several years ago. My wife and I were out to dinner with two of our kids as they attended college. They brought along several friends. We’d been around their friends and roommates multiple times, but for some reason the evening was different.
The conversation crossed the threshold from one of those “catch up on the day conversations” to a more cerebral one involving engineering and physics that they were addressing in their respective classes. We sat riveted. Within seconds my head spun. I could not follow the conversation.
As they related to each other, asking questions, pontificating, suggesting ideas, discussing equations and in general talking about things I knew nothing about, it hit me that the world will be in good hands with them. They’ve learned and assimilated a ton of complex subjects and have the ability to synthesize it and propose unique ways to apply it in the years ahead.
One could argue this is a small subset of millennials, and that would be correct. But the bigger point to me is that there are a lot of young adults in the world who have the drive and educational background to change the course of trends that need correcting.
It won’t be easy. They’ll face walls and naysayers like anyone does who works towards change.
Many people complain about change, not wanting to modify personal behavior or actions. Change though is going to be how we clean up the world’s plastic pollution and dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in the decades ahead.
One of our biggest problems today is changing how we see others, opening up to something that may clash with our personal world view. I suggest a step for us baby boomers to question how we see the millennial generation. Let’s listen and hear what they have to say, and couple their early-in-life knowledge with our own. The opportunity is there to grow together in ways we’ve never seen before.