A letter to the next generation
Anxiety about the future, while holding space for hope.
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How can I give you the world
when the earth is burning
and the fragile embers of hope
smolders from the weight of seventy six million votes?
—
Three weeks ago, on an unusually warm October morning, I found myself slipping into a downward spiral. Already pumped full of antibiotics and miserable from a chronic health flareup, it drove me to the dentist in search of drugs or an extraction of a nerve just to end the pain.
My dentist, however, turned to me and said, “Gums are a bit imflamed, but I see no infection around the tooth.”
The dull ache that radiated from my jaw to the entire left side of my face left me unconvinced.
“It’s likely from stress. Are you stressed?” Um, yes.
And then he lightly touched my shoulder and said, “Might I suggest you try something to relieve your anxiety like THC or medication?” Oh. Okay.
I left the office relieved, but also in disbelief that stress and anxiety could manifest that much physical pain, not having learned the lesson once before when exactly four years ago, I ended up incapacitated with a more serious condition that took months to recover.
My mother thinks I have a propensity to catastrophize things. She isn’t necessarily wrong, but when she reminds me of this particular talent that I seemingly possess, we often end in an argument. I reason that I’m actually not a pessimist, but a realist. I end up dismissing her characterization of my disposition because I will never match her resilience or her ability to fill up her reserves with endless wells of hope despite a lifetime of war, poverty, and abuse. She doesn’t understand how her two children ended up so unlike her, but we didn’t grow up needing to buoy ourselves with a survivor’s mentality just to live.
My late brother and I had somewhat difficult childhoods, but we benefitted from her protection and drive to give her children a better life and the immigrant dream—the American dream—of which my mother spectacularly achieved through sheer willpower.
As parents, we strive to break cycles and give our children a better future than the ones we inherit. My life has never been tested like my mother’s, but I gave my children a more stable household than the one I was raised in. That was mainly within my control. What I can’t control is the burden of inheriting a world that is careening toward an uncertain and perilous future.
I still believe that Gen X is the last generation to grow up with a truly care-free childhood. We rode bikes, hung out with friends at malls and movie theaters, and read books when we wanted to escape from our teenage angsty lives. And even though many of us came into adulthood with the rise of the internet, we got to enjoy the early version of the world wide web when it was fun and full of discovery, before a time of data collection, privacy concerns, surveillance, and algorithmic social feeds that influence way too much of our lives.
When speaking to my college-aged children about the future, I try to bury any doomsday pessimism, but I sometimes struggle and they can see right through my thinly veiled attempts. Anyway, they’re old enough to understand the world they inhabit and and I’ve never been one for platitudes.
Everything is going to be ok.
I only say these words now if I can believe it in my gut.
But will it? Will it be ok? My current anxiety centers mostly around my kids’ futures. I worry how they’ll navigate a world of overconsumption, a cost-of-living crisis, and irreparable damage from one climate crisis after another. We have failed to protect them from guns at every turn and they’ve lived their entire lives under the threat of mass shootings at schools. They grew up isolated in their bedrooms during the pandemic at their most critical, formative years.
But in return, they’re labeled the wasted, failed, and anxious generation—snowflakes who are lazy and uninformed. It’s far too easy to blame the youth, but we also need to accept the responsibility of setting in motion all the decisions that have led us to this reality of too many unprecedented events.
So, did Gen Z even have a chance?
We advanced technology, but then lament how they’re addicted to screens when social media and games are addictive by design.
We pushed an entire generation to study STEM, but didn’t prepare them for the oversaturation of STEM graduates flooding the job market or the elimination of jobs from offshoring and AI.
We didn’t prioritize or fund education, but instead politicize the curriculum and then wonder why our kids lack critical thinking skills.
We pushed our girls to be leaders in male-dominated STEM fields, but then take away their rights and fail to provide adequate support for maternity leave and childcare.
So how, exactly, did we expect this generation to turn out?
To my children, I am sorry. My anxiety and tendency to over-parent is rooted in my worries about the future, but anxiety doesn’t solve any problems. I need to do better. But at the same time, you are also not off the hook. Don’t make the same mistakes we did. Don’t choose greed and ignorance or be blinded by short-sighted gratification without thinking of the consequences of the future.
My roadmap is this: to have more trust in your ability to find your place in this world, to be in tune with all the things that give us collective joy, and to be more intentional about occupying the spaces that does give me hope.
Hope is something that can’t be taken away from us. ✨
Lastly, I think it’s natural for most parents to question their parenting. But when my kid hugged me goodbye on her last visit home from college and expressed that she wished she could give our apartment a hug, she gave me the answer that I needed to hear. She put her arms around a corner wall and squeezed it tight, eyes closed, with a little smile.
Related reading
What I read and watched this week
The boys in our liberal school are different now that Trump has won (The Guardian) “As these startling observations made us look back on the last couple of years, we started to realize that maybe this wasn’t as unexpected as we thought.”
Written by an anonymous contributor, some observations, post-election, from one Hudson Valley NY high school.But then there’s this video below. It’s really worth a watch.
HarperCollins is selling their authors' work to AI tech (Lithub)
Author, Daniel Kibblesmith, was offered $2,500 by HarperCollins for the right to use his work to train AI.
Burn It Down: A License for AI Resistance (Higher Ed)
Melanie Dusseau urges that resistance is not futile.
“Challenging generative AI’s influence over writing studies is not an anti-technology stance.”
“Resist AI like the discipline of creative writing still matters.”The History Crisis Is a National Security Problem (Foreign Policy)
As universities shed scholars, key learning disappears.Literacy Gap Map (Barbara Bush Foundation)
130 million Americans—54% of adults between the ages of 16 and 74 years old—lack proficiency in literacy, essentially reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
I love a good, interactive map and the data is eye-opening. This map explores the relationship of literacy to health, income, and education.The Penguin (Max)
I was NOT in the mood for such dark, dystopian television and I could really care less about super heroes, but the visual art direction and the acting is so good—particularly, Cristin Milioti. She gives one of the best performances of a female villain I’ve seen yet.
"I still believe that Gen X is the last generation to grow up with a truly care-free childhood."
We need to stop perpetuating this falsehood. No one's childhood was truly care-free, and, even assuming that was the case, it was only for a small capsule in the vast swath of human history. Prior to 1938, children worked in mines and factories. In some countries, including the U.K., children worked in a limited capacity up until the 1960s (particularly girls doing lacework).
One could easily argue that only Boomer children were the start of anything that resembled "carefree" childhood, but even they grew up in the shadow of austerity and death from WW II. However, Boomer children, and I say this as someone who was born in 1964, had parents who were, shall we say, "unenlightened" about what children were capable of and tended to push them to be little adults from a very young age. I know that my childhood was brutal and abusive and I grew up with a ton of worries about the economy (stagflation and the oil shock), nuclear power and war (The Cold War and Three Mile Island), and the ozone hole that we thought was going to end with all of us dying from exposure to UV radiation when it became large enough.
Idealizing the upbringing of past generations only invites intergenerational hate and envy which is misplaced. The current generation has no idea what material life was like in the past and how relatively impoverished it was. They have no idea what parents said and did to their children because they were so ignorant of child psychology and needs and just imposed arbitrary adult standards on them. Very few children from the generations you're speaking of as not being carefree were ever assaulted by their parents as discipline. Very few grew up as their parents personal servants who were asked to fetch whatever was wanted or forced to do most of the household chores. Childhood may not be "carefree" now, but it is certainly longer and less personally difficult than the eras that people romanticize.
You’re a great parent. Much love from fellow Gen X-er.