So much has been written about the Millennial generation. They may possibly be the most studied and documented generation—and I thought this honor would go to my Baby-Boomer generation. Millennials have unique challenges. The world has been quite different during their lifetime. Fast change. New technologies. Increasing global tensions.
I get to spend a lot of time with Millennials in my work as a pastor. I have two sons who are Millennials. Frankly, I love the generation.
What is interesting to me when I talk to Millennials is some of the misunderstandings they have about my generation—specifically how my generation views their generation.
Recently a young Millennial asked for some of my time to talk through where he felt God was leading him. He was so apologetic for “taking my time.” What he didn’t understand was how much his conversation fueled me for everything else I had to do that day. I loved it. I’ve had similar experiences many times.
The encounter caused me to reflect on other misunderstandings I’ve observed from Millennials about my generation. Feel free to add your own in the comments.
Seven of the biggest misunderstandings Millennials have of my Baby-Boomer generation:
We really do enjoy helping you. Your inquisitive nature is not a burden to us. We don’t consider your questions to be dumb. We know we all have to learn somewhere. There is no higher compliment than to be asked for wisdom—or seen as knowing something worthy of your attention toward us.
We wish we had asked more questions when we were your age. Yours is an inquisitive generation. You want to know. You’ve been used to having information—in fact, you can Google most your answers. We admire this about you and wish we had learned to ask questions earlier. Instead, we learned too many things the hard way—by experience—but we would have avoided some of those experiences if we could have. You inspire us to ask more questions. There are lots of things we can learn from you. (Thank you for this.)
We don’t think we know it all. At least most of us don’t. And, we are OK with it. Frankly, the older we get the more we realize we don’t know. And it doesn’t seem to bother or frustrate us as it did when we were younger.
We don’t always understand your impatience. Seriously, sometimes we don’t. We look at your life and you seem to be doing OK. So, when you are frustrated you don’t have everything yet—or aren’t where you want to be in your career—we don’t always “get it,” But we know we were much like this when we were your age—and probably more impatient in our younger years. There was more of a sense of “work your way up” in our generation, but we often saw unfairness in who got to move up and how.
We often understand what you’re feeling more than you think we do. You think because we are older, and aren’t experiencing some of the issues you’re experiencing, we don’t understand the frustrations you face. It is a new day—and the world is much different—but the things you experience today are some of the same issues we experienced—just without the texting or social media sharing possibilities for them. We struggled (and mostly still do) in relationships, careers, with our parents, trying to find our place, fears about our future—all of those things.
We have a different perspective, but we aren’t as different as you think. We see life from a different viewpoint. We are further along in life. We have more experiences—more laughs, more heartaches, more disappointments, more failures—and all of this makes us see the world a little differently. But we aren’t as different as you might think. We have the same desires you have—for mutual respect, trusted relationships, workplace fairness and opportunity. We may disagree on how to get there—but we want the world to be a better place—as you do. The basic human wants and needs are often filled differently—but they remain much the same.
We aren’t as crazy about all the tech advances either—when it comes to real relationships. Sure, we love the new gadgets—and appreciate you for helping us learn them (thankfully, I finally figured out the DVR)—but, we prefer real conversations with people we love than a text or phone call any day. Sure, we’ve taken advantage of the ease of social media to keep up with loved ones. We are guilty of emailing instead of walking down to your office. We fall into the trap of overworking and under-relating to people in our life. But, just like you, we value genuine relationships. We even like “hanging out.” And hanging out with your generation are some of our favorite times.
Those are a few I’ve observed. Got any to add?
