Adulting is hard

Adulting is hard. My son tells me this all the time. I often hear how my generation did not teach adulting skills to our children. Schools…

Adulting is hard. My son tells me this all the time. I often hear how my generation did not teach adulting skills to our children. Schools are criticized for not teaching how to count change or balance accounts while pushing advanced math and esoteric science.

I can safely say, our parents, and their parents before them did no better. In fact, not only have time and technology changed things more quickly, but each generation also wants different things. My grandparents had to hide cash or trust a local bank. We had to balance checkbooks and learn about credit scores. My children live in a world where online payments have auto reconciling statements — different lessons for different times.

Then work-life balance became a thing. When I was growing up, there was working for the weekend. My parents had work to get ahead. My grandparents had don’t work to death. And anytime before 1802, I am sure it was pretty much work. One thing is common for all of us, no matter what time we lived in, we coped.

Ironically, every new generation tends to frame the older generations as out of touch. A younger generation seeks to define itself by casting the older generation as wrong by default. Where once it was wisdom, age is now ignorance. Unless, of course, it comes to adulting. Then we did not teach them well enough in our apparently ignorant ways.

A little empathy can go a long way. Maybe you didn’t get that first homeschooling on life lessons. That does not mean you have to purge everyone from the workforce and demand unrelenting compliance with new pronouns or orientations in the name of adulting. Every generation has its problems, but they also have wisdom. If we look at from another perspective, everyone might get ahead. What can I learn that I was not taught?

We all share generational conflict and strife as humanity progresses. We can’t teach adulting when it’s on the job training by people who just got by too. We can teach respect for older people’s wisdom in dealing with the world as it changes around us. The game of life is challenging. No one gets out alive. We should all strive to have more empathy and mindful joy. What I call Mindfrohlich. That is a topic for another article.