They say when a person is on their deathbed, the regrets they have revolve around not having spent more time with their family or not having pursued their passions. Nobody regrets not having spent more time on a project or in the office. Recently I had the opportunity to reflect on this. I asked myself whether my father would have similar regrets. He grew up very poor. They lived in a thatched hut and boiled water to send smoke through the roof so their neighbours wouldn’t know that nothing had been cooked in the house that day My father educated himself and worked two jobs most of his life to ensure that his family had a safe home, good food, clothes, and he ensured an education for his children. Will he regret not having spent more time with us or not having taken his wife out on romantic vacations? I doubt it. By any yardstick, his life is an unqualified success. Years later, when my wife and I brought our son home for the first time, he travelled in a car his parents owned to a house his parents owned.
When I remove the rose-tinted glasses that I normally use to look back at my younger years, I am struck by how much time I spent waiting – just waiting. We waited in queues to pay bills, to buy rations, for movie tickets, for the bus. Come to think of it, waiting was our primary function.
Online ticketing, food and package delivery services, online payments for utilities, are my generation’s gift to posterity. If you look beyond the services, what we really did was buy them time.
What do people do with time? I posit that they think. It may look like boredom from the outside, but the mind is never idle. I guess this is why our greatest thinkers went to meditate on mountains and in deserts. When we think, we question. The questions our children raise are uncomfortable ones.
Why do I have to stay in one company all my life if the company can’t guarantee the reverse?
Why do I have to wait thirty years to buy a home or a car or a vacation?
Why do I have to wait twenty years before I can demand a salary that frees me from worry?
These questions discomfort us because they point in directions opposite to the ones we chose. But our incentives were different, weren’t they?
As these cultural values clash in our office spaces, it becomes important to help each of these generations understand where the other is coming from. The oldies need to understand that just as they built comfortable lives for their children, their colleagues’ parents did the same. So it should not come as a surprise that their colleagues demand the same thing their children demand.
An acquaintance’s son asked him for a motorcycle on which he could go to college. The father launched into, what was by then an oft repeated story, about how he used to walk 5km to college. I know that the reason my friend walked to college was not because his parents couldn’t afford the bus fare but because there was no bus on that route. The story has morphed with each retelling, I guess. But it was the son’s reply that struck me as enlightening. He said, “Dad, your parents couldn’t afford to give you a bike for college. My dad can. So why should I not have a bike?”
When we listen, actually listen, to what our children say, we see things in a new light. We are forced to revisit our assumptions. When your child asks for a bike, it might be less about the bike and more about the time it would free up; even if your child may not be able to articulate it in that manner.
On the other hand, the younger generation too must understand that the old foggies were cutting edge in their time. They dared to dream a new world – the world in which they live. They too questioned their elders and their elders’ assumptions.
But where will these conversations happen? Company events try to bring people together, but do they really do this? Most of the time, I see people at such events continue to hang out with their familiar cliques. I would like to propose to have sharing circles. Small groups of between 10 and 15 people from different generations who get together and tell stories. The company can facilitate these meetings from their “outing budgets”. It would be a healthy, safe space for conversations. I can see this leading to new friendships across generations. I can see mentorships growing out of these interactions.
Any takers?
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