You know what’s the worst? Things that should fall into the blessing category but which drive me crazy

My daughter can be that.

Also my job.

Thinking that I SHOULD feel a certain way about these only makes it worse

It’s a lot of fun to be a grownup. Don’t get me wrong, waking up at 5 every day to go to the grownup job is a pain. A SERIOUS pain sometimes. And yet, there are compensations. Driving where I want to go is awesome.

And another thing about being a grownup is free range socialization. My daughter spends her day with age-boxed children in pre- and soon to be elementary school. The education system sets it up that way.

I get to call a variety of people my peers, which I like. All ages. There is a wide playing field in grownup land.  To my surprise, I’ve been here for a while. And my jaded outlook now has some experience to give it depth.

When I was 21 (not experienced) I discovered I was part of a cohort, a generation called X. I was delighted that my learned reflexes were shared in kind by people my age. Everyone was annoyed by the Boomers. Ha! I am not wrong, other people looked at this world and came to the same conclusions.

That was a long time ago, so long that the kids behind me grew up to be my peers now too. The Millennials- what’s up with them?

The annoying thing about the Boomers is the phalanxy cause-driven unity. Causes and ideologies, whether political or business, the ‘this is how it’s done, and this is what we do’ message. Plus their sheer size. I really wish all the money hadn’t burned up in 2008 because maybe they would have retired already and freed up some JOBS.

These millennials who stay at home or get their parents to pay for their college…are you kidding me? For those of us who worked three jobs with as many roommates to get through college, this sounds soft. but okay. I can see that finding one job, let alone three, is a struggle right now.

This article showed me somehting I hadn’t seen behind the go-along-to-get-along smiles.  The Millennials don’t trust anybody:

” Millennials seem …to lack a sense of social trust. Only 19 percent say that generally speaking most people can be trusted, compared to 31 percent to 40 percent among older generations.”

Well. Maybe they are not so gullible after all. They have ratcheted up a notch. And yet, what are all of us supposed to do in a world where you can trust almost no one?
There have been periods in my life where trust is painfully scarce–trust famines.  I found myself in a circumstance, a situation, a relationship or a group where I could not trust the systems around me.

Of course I wanted to hit the eject button and get out. Not possible.

There are long-term consequences from trust famines. Dial the time machine back and we find the generation who lived through the depression. They will never forget the times when they system failed so completely. Grandmothers now who cannot throw away the plastic butter container–you never know when you might need it.

This group? still young. Still fighting. Tolkien said it in The Fellowship of the Ring (a quote tragically missing from Jackson’s movie). After Gandalf dies, the hobbits wail “There is no hope!”

Aragorn replies “We must do without hope.”

Yep. Because we must keep doing. The young adults, in this time, can feel how little the systems and the people running them are trustworthy. And yet we must go on. What else is there? Living must be done. At least we have enough butter dishes; and the butter that goes in them.

Something is missing though. Maybe these Millennials will give it a name and we can diagnose it to start to cure it.