Yeah, us Gen Xers.... we're tough, but for all the wrong reasons.
We're tough, like callouses and scar tissue. With all the connotations of damage, wounds and depression and unhealed trauma that evokes.
We bottle up our trauma and present a "stiff upper lip" and just shoulder the wheel and carry on, rather keeping quiet about how we feel because that's how we were brought up. We bottle it up - the disappointments, the hurt, the anger, the hopelessness, and we just soldier on - because that's what we were always expected to do... even if it hurt us more in the end, and no matter how much - until we inevitably are forced to confront our mortality and frailty.
And then the millennials and Gen Z arrived.
Instead of just putting up with all the abuse we accepted as "just the way things are" like we did, they refused to be a part of it, began to force changes to the world around us, frustrating us and our forebears. Their arguments and their reasoning at first seemed to be just laziness and winging, and going against established everything - but, when we sat down to think about it, it hit home: they're right.
The world we were born into was already breaking, and as time went on, it broke further. We Gen Xers got the tail end of the so-called 'good times', but we also started feeling the tail-end of the whiplash when all the bubbles began to burst. The Boomers just told everyone to "work harder" and called Millennials & Gen Z "lazy" when they wouldn't put up with it. While my generation just knuckled down and got on with it, we did so reluctantly and rebelliously, and all wished there was a better way, but we could never see it. The truth is, we feared the consequences too much. It was too big a risk, and although we saw more of the "bigger picture" than our predecessors, we didn't understand it.
Where we questioned ourselves for our failures to succeed in this world and blamed ourselves for our own brokenness, our successors saw things more clearly. They stood up and refused to be a part of a broken, abusive system. Unlike us, they refused to willingly lie down before the wheels of the machine.
Where the Boomers took their rebellion for weakness, their strength of character and determination gradually opened our eyes to the reality that it's the system that's flawed, not us, and that we suffered under it and still live with the damage it did.
We're tough, like callouses and scar tissue. With all the connotations of damage, wounds and depression and unhealed trauma that evokes.
We bottle up our trauma and present a "stiff upper lip" and just shoulder the wheel and carry on, rather keeping quiet about how we feel because that's how we were brought up. We bottle it up - the disappointments, the hurt, the anger, the hopelessness, and we just soldier on - because that's what we were always expected to do... even if it hurt us more in the end, and no matter how much - until we inevitably are forced to confront our mortality and frailty.
And then the millennials and Gen Z arrived.
Instead of just putting up with all the abuse we accepted as "just the way things are" like we did, they refused to be a part of it, began to force changes to the world around us, frustrating us and our forebears. Their arguments and their reasoning at first seemed to be just laziness and winging, and going against established everything - but, when we sat down to think about it, it hit home: they're right.
The world we were born into was already breaking, and as time went on, it broke further. We Gen Xers got the tail end of the so-called 'good times', but we also started feeling the tail-end of the whiplash when all the bubbles began to burst. The Boomers just told everyone to "work harder" and called Millennials & Gen Z "lazy" when they wouldn't put up with it. While my generation just knuckled down and got on with it, we did so reluctantly and rebelliously, and all wished there was a better way, but we could never see it. The truth is, we feared the consequences too much. It was too big a risk, and although we saw more of the "bigger picture" than our predecessors, we didn't understand it.
Where we questioned ourselves for our failures to succeed in this world and blamed ourselves for our own brokenness, our successors saw things more clearly. They stood up and refused to be a part of a broken, abusive system. Unlike us, they refused to willingly lie down before the wheels of the machine.
Where the Boomers took their rebellion for weakness, their strength of character and determination gradually opened our eyes to the reality that it's the system that's flawed, not us, and that we suffered under it and still live with the damage it did.
The kids are alright. The world will be a better, kinder place in their hands. And the best part is, we can help them build it. 
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All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2023.
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