“All you have to be by the time you're 23 is yourself.”

Themes at the scale of a generation

There is a podcast I love called Decoder Ring. The show explores “cultural mysteries”. The last episode I listened to was called “Selling Out.” It proposed that the concept of selling out was the overriding theme of Generation X.?

The podcast started with the story of the woman who wrote Reality Bites, the movie about Gen Xers coming of age. I remember seeing it in a theatre in Truro. I felt as I watched it that it was already too late for me to embrace or be influenced by any of the motivational messaging in it, although Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke are almost exactly my age.?

I resist being defined by that ‘generational’ analysis that divides us into 15-20 year birth cohorts, although I relate to Gen X memes. My dad’s birth year, 1925, qualified him as The Greatest Generation, while my mom was a Silent Generation member (although she was anything but silent). My three older siblings are straight up Baby Boomers. So I was raised with a foot in many generational cohorts. The concept of zeitgeist, or the spirit of an age, has long fascinated me.?

But back to the podcast.?

First of all, it is very gratifying as a Gen X to be seen, so thank you, Willa Paskin.?

Second of all… wait, is this true? Has ‘not selling out’ as a generational theme affected my life?

My career has not followed a neat trajectory, but whose does? Especially people born 1965-1979, who experienced the same ripples in North American economies. I remember at my first ‘city job’ as a designer at Speedy Print, the production manager told me that my generation really got the worst deal. She (about 15 years older) had walked out of high school and been fought over by employers.??

About ten years ago, I recognized I needed a narrative through-line to make my resume make sense. I felt like I had meandered, following random-seeming opportunities and interests. As I meditated on it, “I have always followed my values” emerged as a story that made sense of the journey.?

And it was true. There was a point in my life where I was working at a very soul-satisfying nonprofit job but then got pushed to take on more fundraising and I couldn’t do it. It just is not a thing I feel is in my wheelhouse, in spite of its necessity in nonprofit work. At the same time, my personal life was in shambles and I was perilously near bankruptcy.?

So I started looking for another job. I was shortlisted for, and then offered, a job with the Chamber of Commerce. Several good-paying jobs were posted with the oil and gas industry. There was always the option of the giant insurance companies or the power company.?

I gagged. I couldn’t do it. It didn’t line up with what I believed. I couldn’t get that close to upholding the capitalist, fossil-fuel driven economy.

It would be selling out.?

Did my values do anything to actually change the world in those choices? There are some who would argue that working from the inside is the best way to make change. For instance, maybe working for the Chamber would have given me a small iota of influence that could have shifted their focus to social enterprises and cooperatives… maybe.??

In truth, shifting narratives like “business is just about profit” or “capitalism is the only way to organize our economy” takes the combined efforts of large numbers of people, pushing at all the edges, individually and collectively.?

So when you have generational cohorts all experiencing the same external influences (little things like climate change, global pandemics, wars, and so on), that is bound to shape the zeitgeist. Boomers believed they would change the world (and they definitely did). Gen Zs believed that we just needed to survive with our values intact, and trying too hard wouldn’t make that much of a change.

Maybe the generations that follow us, the Millennials and Gen Z and Alphas, will compile the generational lessons. So far, the indications are that they understand they can change the world while remaining true to their values.?

Here’s hoping we have left them enough resources and runway to fix things.