an unsolicited guttermorality op-ed

so i'm over at debriefing the boys, and today the kid's wallowing luxuriantly in the sort of eloquent, introspective comment-provoking angst that makes his one of the few twentysomething blogs i bother reading (oh, and the fact that he hasn't banned me despite any number of drunken, offensively presumptious comments goes to his favor as well).

anyway, his post today moved me to write in a way that nothing going on around here at the moment has, so once again a comment made elsewhere does double-duty as an entry here.

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[insert standard mkf “this is not intended nor should it be construed as a put-down” disclaimer here]

congratulations: you’re a prime example of the culmination of generations of well-meaning american parents’ efforts to give their children a “better” life than they had. and the cumulative result of all this kindness? a whole new class of young adults who evince misery and dissatisfaction that their lives out in the cold, cruel world aren’t as instantly (and unrealistically) perfect as their sheltered childhoods were.

and if it makes you feel better, you’re far from alone. there’s a large and ever-growing body of media out there about the “everybody gets a trophy” generation—about how, now that they’re entering the workforce, employers everywhere are having to bend over backward to accommodate these kids’ unrealistic expectations that they should be able to just blow past all the incremental drudgery traditionally involved in climbing the ladder and immediately shoot right to the top.

see, what america has forgotten in its quest for perfect lives for everyone is that there’s tremendous wisdom in making kids struggle and work for shit, allowing them to taste the agony of defeat, and teaching them how to delay gratification; problem is, there’s pain intrinsic to all of those processes of maturation, and most parents can’t stand to see their kids in pain—so, to the extent allowed by their means, and human nature being what it is, they carpet the world for them. and the big problem is, each generation since the depression has had infinitely greater means with which to make life “easier” for their offspring than the one before—to the point that we now find ourselves with a generation that has no stomach for struggle, and sees instant gratification as its due.

so I would submit that it’s not that your father and his forbears had “lower” expectations than yours--in fact, that's a slap in the face to your father and all he's achieved, especially in light of his family's low expectations for him--far as I’m concerned, a more likely possibility would be that, as a result of their respective upbringings, their expectations were simply more in sync with way the world actually works than are yours.

and as to the whole denmark thing: I saw that story (as well as one 20/20 recently did on the happiest countries on earth), and I agree with others here that to some degree you missed the point, coming as you apparently do from a perspective that so links money and satiation of ambition to happiness—what you characterize as the danes’ “low expectations” could also be seen as a reasoned societal rejection of shallow materialism, acquisition, status and class as measures of happiness for the more enduring qualities of security, community, homogeneity and shared values—and by all objective measures, they might well be onto something (listen to me, I sound like a goddam communist).

and to answer your question: given your stated criteria for happiness and your apparent distaste for dues-paying and delayed gratification, I dunno if you’ll ever be happy or not, kid—-you may have been permanently cursed by early, unearned abundance. my advice would be to do what millions before you have done: learn to use your discontent as a motivating fuel to propel you from where you are now to where you wanna be—and understand it probably won’t happen overnight (and that’s if you’re lucky--if you actually achieved the instant arrival you apparently crave, trust me when i tell you that you’d be back the next day with an “is that all there is?” post).

and finally, since i seem to be so full of pithy wisdom today, remember something somebody really smart once said: “happiness is never experienced; it is only recalled.” if you’re like most people, you’ll look back on your early days of struggle as some of the best of your life.

[oh, and thanks for giving me blog-fodder for today, because up until I read your post I had nothin’.]

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i remember growing up, my elderly relatives would tell me stories about living through the great depression, and i, a soft, pampered baby-boomlet, would always ask myself, "could i have done [insert incredible story of deprivation and self-sacrifice]?" and the answer was often no; these people--my parents' and grandparents' generations--were unquestionably tougher than me.

of course, this trend of the softening of successive generations didn't really seem to matter--as long as america reigned supreme anyway. but our day in the sun is quickly coming to a close, and if the present generation is having this much trouble adjusting to reality as it is now, i have to wonder how they're gonna cope if things really go south.

i have a feeling we may find out.