Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Was Your Generation Easier?
I have been trying to figure out what I want to do next and looking online and most of the comments were negative.
By the time I got to Uncle Bob’s house, I was irritated.
He was sitting in the garden, coffee in one hand and a pair of pruning shears in the other, trimming a rose bush that looked perfectly fine to me.
“Uncle Bob, can I ask you something?”
He smiled.
“You already are.”
“I’ve been reading comments online. It seems like all the older people keep telling my generation that we’re lazy.”
He nodded.
“Go on.”
“They don’t understand. Their generation could flip burgers, buy a house, raise a family, and retire. Houses were affordable. College was cheaper. Everything was easier. Now corporations own everything, wages don’t keep up, and young people are struggling. Then older people tell us we’re just not working hard enough.”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he kept clipping branches.
I continued.
“And have you noticed? Most of the people saying this are older people who already succeeded. They got theirs. They don’t understand what it’s like now.”
He finally looked up.
“You finished?”
“For now.”
He laughed.
“Good. Now let me tell you a story.”
He set down the shears.
“Fifty years ago, my family of five lived in a little house barely nine hundred square feet.”
“No air conditioning.” “One telephone.” “One television.”
“A refrigerator that spent half its life being defrosted.”
“Sometimes meat wasn’t even on the menu for days, we ate grits, beans.”
I stayed quiet.
“We had one car.” “A used one.” “No power windows.” “No air conditioning.”
“No GPS.” “No heated seats.”
“My first cars didn’t even have power steering. or brakes”
“So how did you get around?”
“Mostly the bus.” “School by bus.” “Work by bus.”
“Eventually I bought a car with so much rust you could see the road through the floor.”
He laughed.
“And I thought I was king of the world.”
“But houses were cheaper.”
“They were.”
“So doesn’t that prove my point?”
He shook his head.
“No.” “It proves that some things were cheaper.”
“But some things were much harder.”
“There was no internet.” “No YouTube.” “No AI.” “No online classes.”
“If you wanted to learn something, you bought a book or found someone willing to teach you.”
“If you got lost driving, you got lost.”
“If your car broke down, you fixed it or walked.”
“What about college?”
“I worked while I went.”
“And another job when one wasn’t enough.”
“And when I graduated, I took whatever opportunity I could find.”
He leaned back.
“You know what today’s generation has?”
“What?”
“The greatest collection of knowledge ever assembled in human history sitting in their pocket.”
“You can learn almost anything.” “You can start a business from your bedroom.”
“You can sell to the world.” “You can find mentors you’ve never met.”
“You can build software without knowing how to code.”
“You have tools I couldn’t even imagine.”
“So you’re saying it’s easy?”
“No.”
“I’m saying every generation has different obstacles.”
He pointed at me.
“Your generation has incredible opportunities.”
“It also has incredible distractions.”
I thought about that.
“So who’s right?”
“We both are.”
“Housing is expensive.”
“Debt is dangerous.”
“Corporations are powerful.”
“But none of those facts build your future.”
“What does?”
He smiled.
“Your decisions.”
He took another sip of coffee.
“You know something else?”
“What?”
“Many of the people you think have everything figured out don’t.”
“Their retirement depends on inflation.”
“Their savings depend on markets.”
“Their healthcare depends on governments.”
“They’re worried too.” “They just hide it better.”
“So what should I do?” “Stop comparing.”
“Every minute you spend blaming another generation is one minute you’re not building your own life.”
“But what if the system is unfair?”
He nodded.
“It probably is.”
“So then what?”
“You have two choices.” “You can spend your life explaining why you can’t succeed.”
“Or you can spend your life figuring out how you can.”
He stood up and brushed the dirt from his jeans.
“I’ll tell you the biggest secret successful people know.”
“What’s that?”
“They play the game that’s in front of them.”
“They don’t waste their lives wishing they had been born in another generation.”
He handed me the pruning shears.
“Now quit arguing with strangers on the internet.”
“What should I do instead?”
He pointed to the overgrown roses.
“Start by fixing something.” “That’s how you fix a garden.” “And that’s how you fix a life.”
