In response to a recent BuzzFeed piece, "Millennials Are Sharing The Things They Wish Older Generations Understood, And It's Kind Of Heartbreaking"...here are five things I would like THEM to know.
#1 – You left us/GenX out of the article title. Wish Boomers understood? Don’t you want US to know, too? We need to understand, because sometimes we are shaking our heads at what other generations are thinking and doing. What the heck?
#2 – I know you all got shiny trophies for showing up to sports and things in your elementary school years, but please don’t make fun of my old second place ribbons from our grade school Field Day races. I earned those by actually winning. Not everyone got one. We were not all equally fast or equally rewarded. Yep…
#3 - Sometimes, you will have to search a bit for something you need - and it will be hard to find. We learned this looking for change for the pay phone, a library book for a report, a phone number in something called The Yellow Pages, companies’ addresses when we had to address envelopes to send out resumes, monitoring the "Return" pile at Blockbuster and more. Much more.
#4 - You said “I don't want the moon. I just want what I was promised after doing everything you asked me to." Well, in life, we don’t always get what was promised to us, even after we do everything that was asked of us. We just don’t. We learned this as kids. Sad, but true. Or, as my Gen Z son likes to say, “Too bad, so sad.”
#5 - We know stuff. Just by having lived more years and learned more life lessons IRL (Note to fellow GenXers, this stands for “In Real Life.” LOL. Laugh out loud), we actually have some good advice. More years of simply surviving the hell of heartbreaks and bad bosses, working our way up career ladders and dealing with difficult or bad people. Some things don't change.
Love, A Gen X Girl
