Just recently, teens all over the country walked out of classrooms to advocate for stricter gun laws. Some of the students from Parkland have been featured on talk shows, speaking out for the changes they believe in. While there are many people who applaud them, there are others who dismiss them. They assume that these young people don’t know what they are talking about.
This isn’t a new thing. We have often heard complaints about millennials, and more recently, Generation Z. The descriptions range from lazy to free-spirited, from rebellious to unpredictable. Our elders questions our beliefs and mindsets, stating: “well, in my day…”
But really, the descriptions just mentioned don’t just describe the millennial and Gen Z generations. Some of those words we still think of when remembering older days. “Free-spirited” comes to mind when thinking about the 1960s, and “rebellious” might be something I would use to describe the 80s. Really, one could use the word rebellious to describe the 1770s and other such eras. Existing in an older time doesn’t erase these qualities.
The problem, I think, is in how we categorize people. We take a certain age range, lump them into one category, and then proceed to create stereotypes about them. Older people complain about the rebelliousness of youth and younger people complain about their stubborn, rule-focused elders. The problem with this is that it ignores the fact that time and experiences don’t work in segments but in linear transition.
For example, there could be a group of siblings that are born across a twenty-year timespan. Since most generational sectioning is done in time periods smaller than twenty years, that puts the eldest and the youngest in two different categories. However, though the age gap would mean some difference in experience and worldview simply by the nature of passing time, they would be so similar that it’s possible that the qualities associated with the one generation are also found in the other, or visa versa. Possibly neither of them have either generation’s qualities, or both do. Yet people would look at their birth dates and assume qualities about their character.
The idea that generation defines you is a limiting prospect that makes it easy to be at odds with other generations. It’s crazy to think that someone born in 1980 would have a completely different set of characteristics than someone born in 1981, just because the first is considered a Gen X and the second a Millenial. It’s not like they’re living in two completely different eras.
But the creation of these categories does divide. We stop listening to others’ experiences, brushing them off as either the ideals of an older era or as the ignorance of youth. If we erased those lines and communicated instead, we might just discover something new.
