A Millenial who has never been out of work told me I didn’t understand how hard life has been for his generation and I suggested he punch himself in the face.
‘Why would you say that? You’re just angry that I am right.”
I shook my head and told him that he was speaking out of ignorance and that I had graduated during a recession as had many of my contemporaries and that we had been through 2008.
Didn’t go into all that I had been through because I wasn’t interested in reliving all of it and one of the pictures from here had already made me think about it.
Nor did I tell him about multiple friends who are in their fifties now are back looking for work and that it is different when you’re only 37 as he is.
Wasn’t any point in digging into it because I have bigger challenges than trying to convince him his premise was wrong.
So I went with the short response that suggested you can’t solve for X when what you are really looking for is y.
I heard another story about a contemporary who has breast cancer and it made me think of someone else who has prostate cancer.
There are more than a few of these that I can recite and I am not sure if this is normal or unusual for a group of people my age.
The guy from my high school graduating class who was homeless and found dead of a drug overdose made me shake my head.
I don’t know enough of his story to know how he ended up as he did but I did wonder what would have had happened if things had taken a slightly different path.
Got me thinking again about the people I know who lost children to terminal illness and or to suicide.
Had my share of trouble and some hard times that were particularly difficult but always came out the other side.
How much of that happened because of hard work and how much because of luck is an interesting question.
There are others who have been where I was who worked just as hard and didn’t get the same breaks and had a rougher end to their story.
So I don’t take where I am for granted. It doesn’t mean I don’t give myself credit for being tough, tenacious and unyielding about some things because those are true.
I helped make the changes I needed made.
That is a lesson I shared with my children but I also reminded them as I said above that some things happened because of the efforts of others and that I hold gratitude in my heart for that.
Overall things are pretty good, they certainly could be worse.
I figure that is why some of you are in hiding and that your silence is tied into your own stuff. If you were smart you’d reach out and yes I said it exactly like that.
Read it twice if you need to, it is not said with snark or hate.
The millenial eventually asked me for some thoughts about a few things and voiced some concerns. I told him that what may be might not happen and not to buy trouble.
That was a new expression to him and he asked me if I was good at doing it.
I laughed and said it depended what it was tied to.
“I can compartmentalize and ignore some huge things better than many, but there are a few that are more challenging and those eat up more space inside the old melon than I like. Have to remind myself they are not my monkeys and not my circus sometimes.”
