It’s cliché for old folks to complain about the younger generations. We worry about their lack of work ethic, and bemoan their sense of entitlement. We dislike their music and we’re confused by their sense of humor.
It’s a trend as old as mankind, and alongside it the claim that society is “going to hell in a handbasket” and the kids have their hands on the reins. Despite this the world keeps turning, and things keep changing. Some of it is good and some of it is bad, and all of it has just as much to do with what the kids inherited from the previous generations as what they brought to it themselves. And even though I know this, and understand what a cliché I myself am becoming, I sometimes find myself shaking my head in astonishment at my nieces and nephews, and their taste in entertainment and music. I found myself doing it again today when I was in a local establishment and saw a mother – probably a little younger than me – who appeared to be dropping off an application for her teenage son. The son, who may or may not want the job, was nowhere to be seen. Now, my first instinct, probably due to my age and some past experiences, was that here was a mother trying to find a job for a son who didn’t really want one. “This isn’t a kid I’d hire,” I thought to myself. “Not if he can’t even bother to come in and drop off the application himself.” But that’s really not fair. There could be any number of reasons he didn’t come back and drop off the application himself. Maybe the family only has one vehicle, mom needed it, and he wanted the application back in as soon as possible. Maybe he’s working another job or jobs that make it hard to get the application back in a reasonable time and asked mom to do it for him. Or something that I haven’t even thought of. The point is my default grumpy-old-man mode wanted to scowl at the kid. It wanted to imagine a scenario where this entitled and lazy youth either wouldn’t get a job and had to be pestered into it by mom, or relied so heavily on mom that they wouldn’t be able to get through a shift without her coming in and doing the work for them. The truth, though, is that our kids today are just as hard working and enterprising as any generation before them. And just as lazy, because they are just as much individuals as any of the rest of us. And everywhere I look, even my grumpy-old-man eyes can’t deny, there are kids hustling. Josiah Wills, the young entrepreneur we featured last week, isn’t wasting time lamenting the climate change problem his generation inherited from us. (And let’s make no bones about it, it’s a problem we can’t deny.) He’s found a way to confront the problems that create it (carbon emissions), and address some of the symptoms that arise from of it (topsoil erosion from droughts and flooding), all while raising worms that can be used to feed pets or catch a fish for dinner. Are worms alone going to save the world? Not at all. But Josiah isn’t alone. There are kids like him all over. Kids who want to raise animals. Grow mushrooms. Plant trees. Kids who want to grow renewable resources like industrial hemp. There are kids who want to go into the trades, who will learn to wire homes with solar cells or wind generators as part of their regular training. There will be plumbers who begin doing things like recycling gray water to flush toilets in every home they build. The point is, it’s going to take a lot of hard work. But these kids aren’t afraid of work. I’ve seen that. And they are flexible enough to do things a new way – a better and greener way. They aren’t tied to the patterns we are. Far from taking us to hell in a hand basket, I feel like we’re probably handing the wheel over to someone better suited to driving; at least in the world we’re leaving them. These kids, the ones you see in our pages winning 4-H awards and carpentry competitions, creating art and engaging with their communities, give me hope. And hope is something every grumpy old man sorely needs.
