A couple of weeks ago I read an article on helping young people find purpose in their lives.  The author made several good points, and this got me to thinking.  In several conversations with my youngest son, Mason, he has mentioned how he is the only one of his high school friends to have managed to leave home and build a career.  He is in his thirties, so that means his friends are still living at home in their thirties.  I hear this happening more and more these days.  What is going on?


If this were a hundred years ago, this would be normal.  The typical family household was multi-generational.  Three and even four generations of family members commonly lived under the same roof.  Average people did not have the means to strike out on their own and afford to own a house of their own.  This is because back then to buy a house or property you had to have at least a 50% down payment, and the most common mortgages required an 80% down payment.  Naturally, most people were renters.  The common people that did own homes built their home themselves on a piece of property they homesteaded.  The modern mortgage did not come into existence until 1934, and it was not even offered by banks, but insurance companies hoping to grab up properties when people failed to keep up on the payments.  Back then less than 40% of families had homes of their own.
 

Well, these times may be coming back.  Housing prices are getting so high that even a 10% down payment is beyond reach for young people.  The zero percent down of the '90s is a thing of the past since it caused the financial crash which lead to the housing crisis.  But this is just a symptom of a much larger issue.  Throughout most of our history survival was the name of the game.  Only a very small percentage of the people had financial abundance.  About 95% of the population had no financial safety net, and so there was never any question of what you were to do once you left childhood.  It was work to make a living or else you would starve.  That was certainly the understanding as I was growing up.  I was part of the post-war baby boomer generation, so there was enough abundance that those who wanted it could pursue an education and a career of choice.  But back when I went to university, only the top 5% of students had that opportunity.

In the midst of all this is a strange confluence of other factors.  All of a sudden everyone going to school to get some sort of professional education is supported by government loans.  Kids are told they can be whatever they want in their lives.  At the same time, they are financially supported to the degree that they don't need to get any job to get their basic needs met.  But 60 years ago the message was clear – produce or die.  Now there is no message.  The question is now “What do you want?” within the context of “You can be whatever you want to be.”  At the same time, the message is that they don't need to be anything.  Perhaps even worse than that is no one needs them to be anything.

When I talk to one of my patients that owns a manufacturing business, he tells me how hard it is to find employees with even a tiny sense of work ethic.  The people he hires don't even feel the need to show up at work and do what they are hired to do, yet they still expect to be paid.  Work is no longer important or necessary for survival, and the idea of work as a means to find self-fulfillment seems to belong to some forgotten age.  Something feels deeply wrong here.  That perspective may simply be my old fashioned values.  Perhaps we are no longer supposed to have a sense of meaningful purpose.  Maybe Peter Pan now runs things and we are all supposed to just play.  If so, then I am in trouble because I thrive on having a purpose.  Maybe fear of starvation drove me into this mindset – the need to produce to survive.  Maybe I am the one who is out of touch with reality and have no clue as to how to achieve happiness.  I don't know, let's check reality.

Suicide rates have increased steadily every year over the last 20 years.  Suicide is now the second leading cause of death in the 10 to 24 age group.  Accidents are number one and homicide followed by drug and alcohol deaths are number three and four.  This does not look like a lot of happiness going around with the younger generation.  One in six youth (16.5%) are diagnosed with a mental health disorder each year. But take into account that, on average, it takes eleven years of suffering to get diagnosed.  Perhaps on a positive note for the planet, so many young people are so disassociated and disconnected that interpersonal relationships are no longer being sought.  The upside here is that birthrates are going down so much in some places, like Japan and Korea, that at their current rate there will be no more Japanese or Koreans within a hundred years.  The same thing is happening within certain sectors of the US population.  A term I hear from many sources is “middle-class despair” as traditional values are lost and no new better values (meaning functionally adaptive) are replacing them.

Reality does not seem to support the hypothesis that the young generation has it together and the old school values have lost relevancy.  So what has gone off-kilter to cause this societal failure to produce functional youth?  The answer is of course very complex – way beyond my ability to fully grasp.  So the best I can do is take a few potshots from the sidelines.  This will sound strange, perhaps even bizarre, but I believe we are seeing the consequences of what I call the Disney generation.  The “wish upon a star and you can be whatever you want to be” mindset in a world where everyone is a prince or princess is what the baby boomers wanted to believe as true for their kids.  They taught this pernicious lie to their kids and now we are seeing the consequence.  Why do I see such a lovely picture as pernicious?  Because it teaches kids to be utterly self-centered and entitled.  The Disney myths work in the movies because the key characters endure humbling hardships that teach them to have compassion.  But modern parents never want their children to have to endure such hardships.  They want happy endings without the pain and suffering that makes the happy endings possible.  Telling your kids they can be anything they put their focus and effort into becoming is great inspiration.  But the message the kids are getting is that they are entitled to be seen as special without any effort.  I actually hear politicians pushing this claptrap because they know that voters want to believe it.  Everyone wants to be special just because they exist.  They feel they shouldn't have to actually generate any real value to others with their lives.


My old school values relate to a very different message.  They don't ask me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  They ask me, “What valuable service do you want to offer the world when you grow up?”  The message is that your value in life comes from the service you provide to others.  I'm sorry, but the implicit message is that if you are not of service, if all you do is take from life, then you have no value.  I don't want to hear any crap about how some people are disabled and can't provide service.  Love is the greatest service any of us can offer, and every one of us has an infinite supply of that to give.  Love does not cost us anything but our belief that our way is best and most important, yet it will buy us everything that is of importance in our lives.


I believe that kids today are falling into desperation because no one has told them they have this infinite resource within themselves with which to generate value for themselves.  Real life is telling them that the message their well-meaning parents gave them doesn't actually work.  To succeed in life you have to create value.  Some kids are smart enough to figure this out and make a life for themselves.  The rest are trying to generate a feeling of value by reaching the next level on their favorite video game.  Sorry, the real world does not care about your video game scores.  Yes, society values super effective business and tech skills, but it also values loving, high integrity people – something that is within reach of everyone.  You become special by treating everyone else as special.  That is the real magic.

Take care,  

David                  

   
Ellen update:    

Valentine's Day!  For us that means my traditional Valentine's day giant cookie - which this year turned out to be a flourless chocolate tort and a little trip out to eat somewhere.  This year we went to Brookfields since they offer gluten free bread with which they will make French toast, for sandwiches and burgers, and other stuff.  We both opted for the patty melt with some sweet potato fries.  Yum!