What do Millennials want to do most of all?

I often wonder what the world will be like in the future. Will our planet just melt down, be swept in floods, will the human race die out? Or will people find a way to stop this destructive path, find a better way to take care of the environment, save resources, produce less waste, and live simply and in harmony with nature? I care about the human kind. And I care about my daughter who is almost five now. I would like her to live in a safe and happy world.

So speaking of the future of our planet, we have to admit that it depends a lot on the people who will be living on that planet at the time, who will have the powerful positions and make the important decisions. And who are these people? Well, the generations that are young now – the Millennials and Generation Pragma (my daughter). And us of course, as long as we are alive. Since I do not know them that well, I had to find out more about these generations in order to know where the human race is heading.

Therefore, I went to a lecture of Kairos Future talking about the different generations and their values, desires and priorities. I learned that these are quite cyclical and tend to repeat every 20 years. The Baby Boomers (our parents born between 1940 and 1960) are Self-assured Prophets – builders of the society, long-term planners, engineers with optimistic culture. I call them hippies, although my mom is not hippie. Generation X (me and everyone born between 1960 and 1980) are the Social Workers with passionate culture and strong convictions, pro maximum concentration of power, and a bit cynical. Well, yes, the Cynical Nomads who question everything, I recognise myself there. And now we come to the Millennials – Constructive Pragmatics, entrepreneurs, strong individuals with cynical culture and pro maximum division of power. The next generation (those born after 2000) Generation Pragma are the Diplomats – Leaders for change and action, well-cared for, but with a practical culture.

So the lecture actually focused mostly on Millennials, their desires and values.  A lot of facts were revealed – that their formative years were impacted by important events such as the attack on the WTC, the Financial Crisis of 2008, the Global Warming alarm (Al Gore’s  movie “An Inconvenient Truth” started the wave). I learned that most of them are pro multicultural society, say that the traits they respect the most are: the ability to be a good parent, being well-read and intelligent and keeping a family together. They dream of getting a good job (although with less emphasis on the “true calling” thing), of having a nice and safe place to live, finding the right partner and having kids. No surprises there.

They want safe jobs, normal working hours, nice and long holidays. I would have thought that they would be more adventurous, creating their own jobs, outside the traditional labor market (only 30% of them are self employed). But, hey, these are the facts!

What surprised me the most actually was the fact that what Millennials want the most is….. to close the door, do nothing and not be bothered! It got me thinking. Have we become so overwhelmed with information and demands that we just want to close the door and not be bothered? In an age where everything is changing very quickly  – concepts of the workplace, professions, relationships traditions – do we just get too confused and overwhelmed? Is it a primal instinct to just close the door and keep all “the noise” out?

I certainly do get overwhelmed, although not a Millennial, and generally can juggle a lot of things at the same time! I enjoy doing different projects – interviewing interesting profiles for Success Stories Magazine, attending Fashion Week and Stockholm Tech Fest, writing fashion trend analysis, teaching, working out, going to lectures on sustainability, new technology, start-ups. And yes, sometimes I too, just want to close the door, curl on the sofa and watch some series! Because even though I find all those activities terribly exciting, the truth is that for some of them I do not get paid.  So I shouldn’t bother, right? But no – I still want to do all these things, feel the pressure to be there and perform the tasks I have taken on. So yes, I am trying to do too many things at the same time, and should leave some time just for myself! And I try to do that. To the best of my abilities…..

But I still wonder – why are we pushing ourselves so much? Is it because there is so much pressure, so many expectations, the fear that we will miss out on something very interesting? All of the above perhaps. And yes, everyone needs a break now and then. I just hope that for the important things in life we are ready to leave that sofa, jump out and save our planet. Because it is up to us after all.

Self-reflection: Completeness

The second pillar of life is Wholeness, Completeness, Totality. (Look at the yin yang picture). “Whole” is a word very close to the words “holy” and “healing”, which is not by chance.

The psyche is the totality of the human mind – both conscious and unconscious. The conscious is the “I”, the ego, the persona, what we project to the world. The “self” is the unconscious, the things we know intuitively, the values, the power of life sitting at the very core.

We should keep the “I” connected to the “self” at all times and the “I“ should rely on the “self” that everything would be fine.

When the Little Prince met the fox, she told him: “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Truth can be understood only intuitively. We can search for it and analyze it, but in the end we know the truth, the right decisions intuitively.

Mizuta Masahide, a 17^th century Japanese poet and samurai wrote:

Since my house burned down

I now own a better view

of the rising moon

What is he talking about? Is it about taking down all the walls that the ego has built around itself, forced by societal norms and what “face” we try to have for the outside world? Is it that when these walls fall down, we are reunited with the “self” and can be that person, which we really are, and be happy with that union and completeness?

Often a change is needed to achieve that completeness, a breaking down of the walls. One has to be ready to lose everything in order to win. And there are preconditions that need to be fulfilled before that happens – three steps to climb:

The first one is to see, to have an insight. When you see, when you have an insight about the right direction, then half the journey is done.

The second step is to will, to want to take that step. Once you are there, at the second step, you obey that impetus.

And the third step is to dare, to have the courage to do that change in your life.

Soren Kierkegaard says that to dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

In India they have a story that a person goes through three transformations in life – the camel, the lion and the child. The camel first goes with the caravan and follows every step the other camels make. Then it goes away as a lion and hunts down a dragon, fights, and in the last transformation the person is a re-born child with open senses.

Do not be afraid to be that reborn child and be complete.

Self-reflection: The Child

I recently went to a course called The Whole Person (Den Hela Människan) led by Bengt Jacobsson, so I will write a few reflections from that course in a series of posts.

According to some schools of thought we learn our values up until we are 7 years of age. I myself learned to help people, to respect the individual, to be curious, observant, cultivated my love for books and writing. I am still that same person. Shaped a bit differently by my life and experiences. But that little wide-eyed girl is still there. And it is so important to go back to that child often and the values we knew were true back then!

“Weeks passed, and the little Rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about. He didn’t mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn’t matter.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit