It bothers me when I hear people condemning Millennials
for acting entitled, especially when those people try to blame it on something
as superficial as receiving too many trophies for just showing up. Millennials act no more entitled than their
parents. They simply act
differently. I spend a lot of time with
Millennials and I speak from experience.
All three of my children are Millennials and they are good, decent
people who work hard. And they got lots
of trophies. And I have been teaching
Millennials since they first graduated high school and can vouch for the fact
that while a few might expect to get an “A” simply for sitting in their seats,
most will work to get their grades. And if they don’t, it is usually because
the school system that created them as students has beaten the desire to learn
out of them with standardized testing and memorization.
It is role modeling, and not trophies, that has created
any perceived problem with the Millennials.
Role modeling is the most influential means of teaching a person how to
behave. If children have good role
models, no number of trophies can hurt them.
And these young people have had some crappy role models when it comes to
feelings of entitlement. The Baby
Boomers came and conquered. As a
generation, they have consumed more and left less for others than any
generation before them. They are the
original “Me Generation” and gave us all the self-indulgence that was the
1970s. And the same people who went out
there and marched for peace and lived communally for a while are often the ones
who currently drive around in their fancy cars and live in gated communities,
protected from the scary world they helped create. They worked hard and earned money and seem to
have no empathy for the following generations who do not have the same
opportunities they had. If I never hear
the phrase, “You have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps like I did” again,
I will be happy.
And don’t get me started on Gen-Xers. We are almost anti-social in our
self-absorption! We have barricaded
ourselves behind walls of independence and angst. “I will do it by myself, for myself,” is the
motto of Generation-X. “No one helped me
and I’ll be god-damned if I will help you.”
The other cry of the Gen-Xer parent is, “I sacrificed my youth for you
and now it is time for ME.” Barf. We Gen-Xers have had to fight a lot harder
than the Boomers for our place in the economy, but most of us found a place. We had to struggle to buy that house, but we
finally did. We had to fight for our
jobs, but we had them, at least until we got down-sized. The Millennials have not been given these
opportunities, but still feel entitled to the benefits they grew up with.
Feelings of entitlement are a tradition of White
America. They are a legacy handed down
over the centuries. It is easy to point
to the young people, clamoring for the newest technology, and see
entitlement. But it is not limited to
this generation. Case in point:
Last weekend, I took my dogs, Riley and Sunshine, up to what
we here in Chico, CA, call Upper Park – a vast wild parkland on the edge the
city limits. I walked along the old fire
road, taking it easy and enjoying the warm sunshine and the quiet. Upper Park is a canyon with a large creek
running down the middle and I could just hear the roar of the water from where
I walked down the road. To my left, a
copse of trees, a unique mixture of oak and pine, opened onto a large area of
grassland, yellow, with bright green new grass peeking through, that dropped
off abruptly in the distance to a deep canyon of steep, black Lovejoy basalt
walls around the creek. To my right, a grassland
scattered with oak trees placed haphazardly throughout the grass and large
brown lava rocks climbed, first gently and then steeply, up the other side of
the canyon to the peeks of the startling buttes. There was a slight breeze and birdsong and
after the horror of the election, I lost myself in the pleasure of nature. That is, until a middle-aged man on a
mountain bike flew past me on his way down the hill, so close that my hair and
my t-shirt sleeve fluttered in the breeze he created and I could feel the
air-pressure difference on my arm. I
stopped walking abruptly, my heart racing and my breath labored from the near
miss. He flew on by. But my dogs were off leash and ahead of me
and my black male Pit Bull mix, Riley, does not behave himself well when
mountain bikes fly by. He jumped out of
the ravine he had been sniffing in and hurtled all 76 pounds of solid muscle at
the bike, causing the rider to almost lose his balance. The rider righted himself while Riley ran
back to me at my call. As soon as he saw
he was safe from attack (although Riley would not have actually attacked him),
the biker stopped his bike and yelled, “You should have your dogs on a
leash! He almost knocked me over!”
“You almost ran me over just now!” I yelled back, amazed
that after such a close call, he was not in the least contrite.
“You had plenty of warning! You should have gotten out of the way!” he
yelled in reply, revealing his deep-seated feelings of entitlement. The fact is that given a warning yell from a
biker, I always step out of the way, knowing it is far easier for me to move
quickly than it is for them. However,
this man had not called out to warn me.
We were not at a corner, so it was not that he had come upon me in
surprise. He had simply not cared. He had assumed I would move to make room for
him on a road he seemed to think he was entitled to use more than I was and
when I did not, he felt entitled enough to blame me for his near miss.
We ended the exchange with a few “Fuck yous” and he rode
off, muttering threats. Riley was
circling me a bit anxiously and Sunshine, our ginger and white Bully Pit,
scampered up to me, happily oblivious to the drama she had missed. After a few days of feeling victimized, I had
to admit that my own entitlement had reared its ugly head, too. I love dogs and do not fear them and while I
am much more careful with my dogs in populated places, in the wilds of Upper
Park I feel entitled to let them run.
Dog lovers will agree with me that dogs need a place to run free. Bikers will think that dog owners need to
make sure their dogs don’t knock them over as they hurtle down hills. Entitlement stretches throughout our
culture. Every time a car cuts me off on
the freeway the drivers are exercising their feelings of entitlement to being
wherever they want to be at any given time.
God only knows, merging is a lost art because drivers all feel they are
entitled to being first in line.
Speaking of lines, every time I get impatient when
standing in line at a store and start rolling my eyes and sighing or muttering
under my breath about morons, I am showing my own entitlement. I am exhibiting behavior that says, “I am
more important than you and my time is more valuable and I am entitled to going
to the front of the line at worst and to all of you peons disappearing out of
my way at best.” Sometimes I break into
giggles at myself when this Royal Princess exhibits herself.
We all think we have a little royal entitlement due us,
so the next time you hear yourself, or someone else, complaining about how
entitled the Millennials act, remember that they are only behaving as they were
taught to behave.
No comments:
Post a Comment