Ever read the book “A Moveable Feast” by Ernest Hemingway? He demured in Paris in the 1920’s, with the likes of Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and F.Scott Fitzgerald. This group of literary geniuses was also known as La génération perdue = The Lost Generation.
Similar to Gertrude Stein’s self proclamation during a depressed time after WWI, I’d like to declare our GenerationX “The Lost GenerationX”.
We’ve been a fairly unfulfilled group of GenXers. As coined by the author Douglas Coupland, we grew up the antithesis of loyal workers after watching our parents suffer in “veal fattening pens”. And we have been lost to the media, the forgotten demographic to brands and marketing engines, while residing in our heads and occupied with creating our own optimism in a world utterly overtaken by corruption and a self-worship of one’s own net worth. We are baffled that the focus is on self-success and taking care of one’s own, over the well-being of humanity as a whole.
As a side note, it often amazes me and Agent S that one can believe a larger wall between neighbors is safer than looking out for one another.
If you subscribe to the gated communities of Brazil over the idea of leaving your babies outside a cafe in Iceland because it’s safe, then I encourage you to travel to Iceland and tell me who will live longer, happier lives!
And yet, GenX is not living a healthy “balanced” quality of life. In fact, many of GenX are either CEO’s of companies large or small, or they are their own CEO’s and they’ve abandoned the structure of corporate and non-profit America. In fact, I imagine that the Affordable Care Act has given more GenX families the freedom to choose between their terrible manager and being their own boss.
The ramifications of being a part of the Lost GenX tribe is that we are entirely stressed out about money. We just choose to be in control of our stress by downsizing our lives, even if it means we occasionally feel we are gambling our health and well-being because we have a LOT more to risk than the younger millennials – some of them possibly our own children whom we’ve sheltered.
Although GenX is lost in the shuffle and never the topic of conversation in the workplace, I think that this group will continue to rewrite the code of success for ourselves and millennials – and we may or may not get credit.
But let’s face it, we really could care less.
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