GENERATION GAP

 From Sampath’s Desk:

  

 

GENERATION GAP IS A REALITY, ACCEPT IT

 

Generation gap basically involves and evolves with the inevitable aging which is a perennial process, necessarily creating a divide between generations.

 

If the world is moving fast today, it will move faster tomorrow. This will go on in an endless spiral. Each passing day brings new arrivals, new thoughts, new hopes, and new aspirations. New trends set in and change, sometimes by the turn of a day. There is always scope in the ever-changing world for ever-evolving trendy things and innovative thought processes.

 

The divergence in the thought process in successive generations due to constantly evolving changes and trends in all walks of life, which is natural to crop up, is a major cause for the generation gap. Age and aging lend rise to the psychological gap in terms of thinking patterns and ushering in new norms. Children, with passage of time, understandably and rightfully believe that they are grown-ups and it is high time for them to be independent which will help them gain self-confidence and self-esteem. Parents and elders should aid them to reach the goal-post.

 

A simple definition given by Cyril Connolly is, “Generation gap is one war in which everyone changes sides.” Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it and wiser than the one that will come after it.

 

Said Spiro T Agnew, “The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated in a contemporary antagonism known as the generation gap.”

 

People especially children and youngsters don’t just prefer innovative thinking and new things but strive to have an independent identity, well and easy-going system, and penchant for self-esteem.

 

Aren’t we living in an era where almost everything including technology and system keep on changing and things get outdated very soon, and a new trendy scenario ushered in even in a short span of time? Once humans lived like nomads roaming about from place to place. Didn’t they settle at particular places which factor subsequently came to be known as nativity?

 

People are different from one another, so are the generations; they mostly differ due to factors like age, knowledge levels, attitude, aptitude, moods, trendy changes, etc. Children are mostly carried away by their emotions, fantasies, imaginations, impulses, and inquisitive depths, the teenagers go by logic, reasoning, scientific and rational tempers, the youth make a blend of these factors, and senior citizens understandably go by experience-driven wisdom and intellect-induced pursuits. Changes in the thought processes in successive generations due to constantly churning trends in all spheres of human activity are a major cause of the generation gap.

 

Let us recall Rabindranath Tagore who said, “Don’t limit a child to your own learning; for he/she was born in another time.” Obviously, he/she is going to live in a new world breathing fresh air. That necessarily triggers fire and passion in them to walk and talk with a difference, off the beaten path.

 

More often, one could see the following factors creating and/or widening the generation gap between parents and their children – lack of understanding of the children by their parents, children’s mistakes are rarely tolerated by parents, children are expected to be parent’s replica, too many comparisons made by parents of their children with others, decreasing parent-children interactions and dialogues, etc.

 

Parents and elders may not always be right. Parents may take pleasure to tell their children, “in our days it used to be so and so.” In the ever-changing world, your sermons may not work as there is a big generation gap separating us from our children and youngsters. For example, if your child’s opinion differs from yours, why can’t you think that he is looking to touch the sky and you are only telling him/her how to travel to the hill-top. So, just relax, ponder, converse, and then act.

Don’t nurse an illusion that the only criterion for respecting people is that they were born before us. Ironically, many parents and elders are either really ignorant or faking innocence even before the mind-blowing sea-changes happening right under their nose.

 

Parents and elders, let the children and youth live their lives of their own. Of course, you stand guard to them and be happy. Enjoy your children and the youngsters enjoying themselves the way they like even as they scale new heights in their life, as long as they don’t drift away from cardinal principles.

 

A naughty youth quipped thus, “Those who criticize our generation forget who raised it.” Charles Spurgeon’s said, “Every generation needs regeneration.”

 

To conclude – all generations have similar values; maybe they just express them differently.

 

(R.SAMPATH)

29/10/2021