Generational Power

I'm reading Generations by Strauss and Howe. I've known from pop culture and my own struggles that the Boomers have been running the show for a long time. Born in '60, I call myself a tail-end boomer. Like the little sister always lagging behind, I missed out on all the pivotal events that made the boomers what they are. I was seven when Woodstock happened. I've tagged behind the 'boomers in everything else, too. I leapfrogged through my career laterally, as the 'boomers had Management all sewn up. So I had to be flexible, alert for opportunities. It took me twenty years to make it to Management, but I did it. I tell my Millenial generation that their progress will be much, much faster.


So I relate much more to the "thirteeners", or Generation Y, who followed the boomers. Their struggles are my struggles. I was with the Gen Y's when we got tested, and tested, again for our literacy. Our horrified teachers would pull out the dusty grammar books and drag us through the basics over and over again. Unlike my Gen Y counterparts, I had learned to read and write thanks to the British West Indies Reader. I'd started my education in the tropics, where they still believed in old fashioned rote learning. After a week of grinding boredom in Canada, a sympathetic English teacher showed sympathy. She exempted me from the grammar exercises and gave me books from her private collection to write book reports on.


The Gen Y is a cynical generation, reserved, not opening up easily. I don't admit very easily to my own cynicism, probably because I tag it as "realism". It really has been that hard to get ahead. I've been laid off. I applied like a madwoman to get back in. I've pommeled that glass ceiling to no apparent effect. I've felt my whole life that the boomers are running the show, and nobody asked me what I thought.


Which is why this book is such a revelation. The authors point out that the Gen Y's now dominate the culture by population. One can't tell by watching television, as geriatric ads now dominate the air waves. Is it perhaps because the media and entertainment industry has a tough sell to cynics?


So who are we, the Gen Y's? What makes us care? This paragraph from the Generations book really hit home for me, regarding civic mindedness, ..."12 percent of them mentioned voting as an attribute of good citizenship. Then again, 48 percent mentioned personal generosity... When you vote, maybe you waste your time - or, worse, later feel tricked. But when you do something real, like bringing food to the homeless, you do something that matters, if only on a small scale. The president of MIT has likened the 13er civic attitude to that of the Lone Ranger: Do a good deed, leave a silver bullet, and move on."



I'm thinking my plans for middle age and retirement are perfectly suited to that mentality. I don't trust that the institutions I will interact with in a few years are at all prepared to be kind, human. I have the power to make a difference, in my own small way, towards a kinder experience in the queues and lines I will eventually join. I have the time and energy to give myself to a cause, and I can do it quietly without a lot of fanfare.


It's a perfectly fine civic activity to keep me engaged and active for a very long time. I think Gen Y's will make great volunteers in our middle years. Just don't pull any fast ones.

I borrow the picture from Charles Rowland, and his blog, whom I suspect is a fellow-feeling thirteener.

A New Reason to Visit Heaven

For the second night I am haunted by the pictures in that Life magazine. I dreamed of the girl carrying dozens of loaves of bread. I dream of her and the boy who confronted his violent father. The eight year old boy called the cops on his dad when his dad threatened his mom with a knife. In the photo the boy hollers in his subdued father's face, "I hate you. Don't you come to my home no more".

In the dream, that boy smiles at me. I want to talk to him in the baddest way. Did he grow up strong and good? And the girl. Was she able to skirt bitterness and the weariness, and find joy in life?

So these two kids are added to my list of people I want to talk to in heaven. There's Moses, a humble man who walked his people out of slavery and along the way wangled a friendship from God. And Florence Nightingale who patiently changed her world forever with application of sanitation in the hospitals and respect for the common soldier.

There's a quality in survivors that I deeply connect with. Researchers are finally tracking down that elusive quality. It has something to do with resiliency. An ability to look at a blow in a different way; to see opportunities; to determine a different future.

Despondency is a luxury of the rich

Or rather, despondency that leads to inaction is a luxury the poor can't afford. What brought this on was some photo essays from Life magazine. We picked up a discounted copy of their seventieth anniversary edition, and I spent hours absorbing the photographs. Two images are imprinted forever. The first is of a girl lugging twenty-four loaves of bread to the public ovens (page 58). This bread will feed her family for a week.

http://www3.fis.utoronto.ca/research/students/Bhalil/FoodandClothes.htm

The second is a twelve year old boy feeding his baby sister beans and rice, and later lying exhausted on his mat (page 65). He feeds the family while his parents work, and suffers from bronchial asthma and malnutrition. He says, "I am not afraid of death. But what will they do after?"

It is horrifying in our modern society to see such stark examples of poverty and child labor; of life reduced to it's fundamentals. Our world is at a crossroads, facing the consequences of our excess. It may very well be that our children and grandchildren will have to work harder and make do with less. They may never experience the luxuries we take for granted. Will it get so hard as these two examples? I don't think so.

Can we afford to lay down?

Only if we have excess. At our most fundamental, we must get up from our mat and determine a better day. Every day.

About Hope Again, About Living Fiercly

I picture grabbed me yesterday, a picture from the Obama campaign. It is a picture of the Cooper girls from North Carolina, on their first sight of Obama.

Maybe they grabbed me because the little girls look so much like my granddaughter. Maybe I want my little girl to have the same hope shining through her eyes as these girls have.

The photographer, Scout Tufankjian, describes the great excitement in that state where the grandfathers had lived through Jim Crow and the young men desperately needed to believe they have a future. Obama's success opens up all sorts of possibilities, doesn't it?

When I see this picture, I imagine the future for these little girls. It seems that the sky is the limit, doesn't it? I want my little granddaughter growing up with such hope, even as she grows up in a world groaning under the weight of our excess.

____________________________

Edited to add: I've printed off some copies to inspire myself and others, and while I was at it, I paired it up with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt. Living fiercly.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and
again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does
actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great
devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the
end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least
fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who neither know victory or defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt

Gratefulness

A week ago I passed out a dozen "thank you" cards to those people I consider part of my support team. The list included family, health care supporters, and colleagues. It only took an hour, and each comment was individual and heart-felt. On most of the cards I thanked the person for helping me be "more than I am". At the same time I was able to clear out my odds and ends of note cards in my drawer that had been building up.

I don't know why, but I was surprised by the warmth got back, almost right away.

My daughter, "You really think of me as part of your support team?"

My hubby, a warm kiss.

My colleague, "You said very nice things about me". I replied, "They're all true, aren't they?". And she added, "You have a great way with words". From other colleagues I received hugs, smiles, and thanks.

My massage therapist, an enthusiastic welcome, "You rarely get thanks in this business. All my colleagues are so jealous." Maybe I am imagining it, but I noted she took more time to coach me through the process to make sure I was benefitting from the results. She's helping me to read my body in ways I've never noticed before.

Perhaps in my lifetime campaign to improve intake experiences, I will also encourage people to carry along note-cards to thank people every day that make a difference. It pays forward, sideways, and right away too.

Taste Testing Tripe

You gotta hand it to the Special K marketing team. They've established a brand of diet breakfast food that lives large in the North American psyche. Too bad it's bad for the dieter. Why? It's got a glycemic index in the stratosphere. This adult version of "Rice Krispies" is absorbed nearly as fast as sugar. There's no fiber to slow it down. But it's so light and crispy...and thin sounding. I am sure people feel thinner just by buying it.

So you can imagine my excitement when Special K releases a low glycemic version of it's product, called "Satisfaction". (I see that "Satisfaction" is not mentioned on it's national site, www.specialk.com . I wonder if this is a Canadian release, to check out it's popularity?)

One bite of "Satisfaction", however, and I was flooded with disappointment. They've loaded it with sugar! I felt my insulin defences rallying to put off the invader. Why, oh why did they add extra sugar?

I'm sensitive to added salt, sugars, and fats now. I've been weeding these tasty extras from the diet, and slowly learning to appreciate the underlying texture and tastes of the foods they are hiding. Of course, as an abstainer of these delightful additives, I now have a heightened awareness of when they are included. And I have a deepening suspicion of why the manufacturer bothers. What are they hiding? Are they masking an inferior product?

I am similarly peeved when a manufacturer removes one "baddie" only to raise another. For instance, "low fat" peanut butter is given an extra dose of sugar. The same with mayonnaise. What? They don't think serious dieters are going to read the label?

Also deceiving is to declare a product "low fat" that never had any, like puffed wheat. Puffed wheat is great. It's a plain cereal, puffed up. No hidden agenda there. Again, how dumb do they think we are?

I wonder as consumers if we are inadvertantly biting the hand that feeds us. I can imagine with any new product that is not loaded with sugars, fat, or salt, the tester is going to notice. Especially if they have not weaned themselves from these three. The first reaction, and I can dearly remember going through it myself, is "yuk". Is this what the food really tastes like? With time, however, the tastes adjust. I now enjoy vivid food flavours, the natural tastes formerly hidden.

I wonder how much time is given for a new tester (consumer) to adjust to a new food? Is it on first taste? After all, a single "yuk" incident might result in the product never being tried again. I would dearly love the manufacturers to re-think their taste testing and allow the testers to try the food over several sessions. Perhaps also their use of other marketing incentives will encourage consumers to stick with a product past the first taste. After all, good is good.

Computers Killing Social Complexity?

I watched a dating show where a team of coaches helped a young computer geek improve his chances. In his test date he was attentive and he had a charming sense of humor. His face and his voice though, was flat. He did not (appropriately) smile or frown. Here is an apparently intelligent man who was failing to display basic social cues. Was it because in his daily life he was mostly using a third party, the computer, to interact with others? The team coached him to be more engaging when meeting people in the flesh.

I wonder also what effect that computer role playing games (RPG's) might have on young people who might be missing social cues in the real world. After all, computers can only simulate human interaction. Their responses are programmed and therefore predictable. A good gamer will quickly work out what responses to feed a computer generated personality to get him what he wants. I've noticed a disturbing trend with my son, a dedicated gamer, to say whatever he needs to in order to progress as quickly as possible. In a gaming world, commitments don't matter. Once you pass a level, whether you lied to a computer avatar or not won't matter.

What if the flat world of computer gaming is preventing vulnerable personalities from developing a rich repertoire of facial recognition and expression? Might they be missing important social cues? Even worse, what if integrity to the computer generation doesn't matter, as long as the "right thing" is said?