Time Will Tell

While I’ve enjoyed a semester of considering Gen X meeting midlife, I’m ready to move on, but a little closure is in order first.

I think that the psychology of midlife will remain much as it has been for other generations who have experienced midlife . . . at least for GenXers who slow down enough to realize when midlife is upon us. 

I don’t think we can deny that there is a certain psychology of “middleness” throughout human experience. The fact is, midlife IS in the middle of the lifespan. It is a time when one starts rubbing shoulders with death and illness more than during younger years. It is a time when one’s own body starts to feel some aging. It is a time when, at some point, each person will probably seriously consider his/her own mortality and try to figure out how the certainty of mortality will affect him/her in the here and now as well as in the years to come. For such reasons, midlife will surely continue to be a time of liminality in some manner, when people must come to terms with who they’ve been, embrace who they are now, and head toward a limited mortal life in the future. I think the time is ripe for new experiences of God and spiritual growth.

I also expect midlife in the coming 10 years or so to gain a flavor of GenX. First of all, we Gen Xers have seen Boomers and the Silent Generation go through midlife and are quite aware that life, for most people, can continue to be rich well past 60. We have, in fact, already incorporated the reality of a long life-span into our lives as can be seen by our later marriages and later child-bearing years. Many of us are not sandwiched between parents and teenagers as previous generations have been. More of us are single and without children. More of us have toddlers. Those of us who were born to Baby Boomers may not even expect to have to tend to our parents for many years to come. Some of us, even in midlife, have living grandparents while we are at the age to be grandparents ourselves. Many of us have confused family trees due to up to two previous family generations plus our own marriages that have dissolved in divorce; the sense of family and caring for the older generation is much more complicated than it has been for previous generations. Homosexual couples with and without children struggle with how the partner/children will financially survive should one of couple die because their family is not recognized as legitimate by laws as are heterosexual families. More children with autism have been born to us than to previous generations, and midlife parents whose children have special needs will certainly be concerned with long-term care for their children. As Gen X studies show, we have been cynical throughout life, and many of us will enter midlife with relatively few economic resources as compared to our parents when they were at midlife. 

As my questionnaires show, we will not be surprised if we find ourselves struggling to have basic needs met as older adults, and such a concern may impact our midlife in some way, whether making us more cynical or spurring us to work harder in an attempt to save more, I don’t know. While many of us expect rich midlife full of adventure offered by the small world we now live in, many of us expect that retirement age will be raised before we get there and that we will need to work longer into our old age than previous generations.

In addition, I am intrigued by Strauss and Howe’s theory of generational cycles. If their observations that large crises happen during the fourth generational turn in each four-generation cycle are accurate, then it is quite possible that the ebb and flow of life as we know it may substantially change around the time most Gen Xers have moved into midlife. According to observations and research by Struass and Howe, the fourth generations in each cycle (Gen X in the current cycle) in the past, have hit their peak of life as midlifers because they rise to the need to become crisis managers, guiding younger generations. 

I would be interested to know how the psychology of midlife played out in the lives of the previous fourth-generation groups in each cycle as identified by Strauss and Howe. I suspect, if the previous generations such as us were busy managing society-altering crises, they likely lacked the energy to invest in their own midlife crises. I imagine they simply survived day-by-day, trying to maneuver successfully through the bigger crisis at hand. Gen X, I think, would easily fall into such paths should massive crisis strike. As a generation, we are well educated. We have survived raising ourselves and have become problem-solvers who avoid idealism in lieu of the practical, and we have invested much effort in raising our children for whom we would do everything in our power to help if they were the young adults on the front lines of massive crisis. 

I don’t internalize doomsday predictions, and I certainly hope Strauss and Howe’s observations from the past don’t come to pass in this particular 4-generation cycle.

I’m not much of a prophet, I confess. I simply cannot see into the future, nor do I want to. So, time will tell what will come to be, and that's sufficient for me. I’m glad to finally be understanding my Gen X-ness, have enjoyed the journey so far, and am looking forward to more living . . . today, tomorrow, midlife, older adulthood, whatever tomorrows come. 

Wishing you all more tales to be told, whatever your generation or stage of life!

God’s blessings!


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Wearing the X . . . or not

Do I consider myself a GenXer? Yes and no. At the outset of this year, I would have said that I consider myself a Gen Xer by birth year only but not by experience or attitude, a stance I’ve since adjusted. After researching the culture of Gen X, I see that I’ve lived in the midst of Gen X, absorbing much either directly or through friends. Does that mean I or any other person born between 1965 and 1981 fit exactly into the Gen X mold? No. But I understand what I’m learning about the experiences and attitudes of Gen X much more deeply inside of myself than I expected. I’m finding that I’m not nearly as “other” as I thought.

13 Gen Xers were kind enough to answer all sorts of nosey questions I asked them about their experiences earlier this year. Counting my response above, today’s post shares an equal mix of male and female voices, all with MidWest U.S. childhood experiences in spite of living in different places now. These answers are in response to the question, “Do you feel that you are a Gen Xer?”

Yes. I am part of a group of people that is the first generation in quite a while to not do better financially than their parents. We also have less of an identity in terms of the label of our generation.

Yes. After the reading the info on Wikipedia, I saw that those were all of my reference points.

Yes.  I am much more open to free thought and expression, much more tolerant of other cultures and beliefs. I feel that life experiences are more valuable than tangible items.

I don’t know. This is a somewhat silly, arbitrary designation without meaning for me.

Perhaps? In some ways, yes. My parents are significantly older and in some ways I relate more to a generation before the X because I didn't have the same experiences of the typical generation Xers. I was not a latch key kid, did not grow up with cable TV and electronics in the same way that others in my age bracket did. I've never defined myself as fitting into a generation box.

No, not really. I don't like to think of myself as being a part of anything, let alone a marketing concept.

I guess I have to be part of some generation so it can be noted in the history books.

Yes, based on age demographic of myself and peers.

Loaded question . . . I believe morally I relate to Boomers more than most Xers. I am very conservative in my beliefs; I do not trust big government and am a Christian.  Because the dates that supposedly define this “generation” are rather large, 1965-1981, I am seven years older than the youngest and nine years younger than the oldest Xers.  Being in the middle of this generation, places me in a unique position regarding issues like homosexuality, abortion and such. I always favor what the Bible says, although I have friends who have both experienced both and are living life styles of one. My “older” friends tend to be more Boomer-like, and my younger friends and sibling tend to be more Generation Y-Like…  So, outside of my birth year, if the standard is that I feel conflicted and lost as a generation, sorry for people around me and their choices? Do I believe that we are a “neglected generation” as data suggests? Yes.

Yes. Probably the most direct comparison is to the Baby Boomers. I've had conversations with Baby Boomers who have reflected on their formative years - say, teens and twenties, and a lot of them tend to get this excited look in their eyes, because anything seemed possible at the time. They can still feel the zeitgeist of the era in a fairly visceral way. But I don't think Gen Xers feel that way. When we came on the scene, anything had already seemed possible, a lot of new and strange things had been tried, and people were tired. We sort of came up in a society that just wanted to feel normal again.

I feel like I fit the GenX mold in most ways, and like many others born in the 70s, I find myself still tilting at windmills and still having an "anything is possible" outlook on life. Oddly, I've always felt that Gen Xers have been most defined by our attachment to 80s music & 80s culture. Our parents were the hippies and free-thinkers, and I feel like I'm part of the collective result of that and have benefitted from it.  One way in which I am NOT similar to Gen Xers, though, has always stuck out in my mind: GenXers were always thought to be aimless wanderers, unmotivated, unable to commit to a career path -- the ultimate slacker generation. That piece of the GenX model has never fit me.

I've thought about this question for a while and can't really answer it. I'm sorry.

Yes. We are a generation of change and expression, in my opinion. We are the postmodernists. We seek answers and do not take things for granted usually; in other words, we understand truth is connected to many other variables. We also understand traditions and new ways of thinking. One may ask, do we fulfill self-imposed definitions of our identity though? If Gen Xers were defined as a group as something other, would we try to uphold that definition?

*Some definitions of Gen X start with birth years as early as 1962 and go through 1985. I asked people in these extended years the same question. The people born before 1965 each identified with Boomers. No one born after 1981 responded.

I’ll let the voices of others echo as I pause the Gen X journey for the day.

Question: Other voices? Gen X or otherwise? Thoughts? You’re welcome to chime in! I’d especially love to hear from young Gen Xers.

This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Why X=Cynic

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. That's what we learned of Shakespeare in high school.

Still, I’m not crazy about the name Gen X. The name was OK back when I thought it sounded kind of mysterious. You know, Zorro, the masked rebel hero had his Z; we, the teenagers who had big hair, have our X . . . kind of different and intriguing. When I realized we have an X because no one could think of anything better, the name lost its adventure. Then I encountered other names we’ve been called based on how older generations have seen us: the whiny generation, the tuned-out generation, the numb generation, the generation of gripers, the generation adrift, the Busters, slackers. Maybe our particular rose smells a little sweeter with the name “Generation X.”

Speaking of Shakespeare’s writings, during Gen X’s childhood, a writer who likely affected our upbringings topped Shakespeare on the American best-seller list in 1976. Pediatrician/professor, Dr. Benjamin Spock, who had been embraced as he told parents in the 1950s to trust their instincts by openly loving their children found himself on trial in 1968 in official courts for conspiracy of counseling young people to avoid the draft and in the court of public opinion for somehow having undermined patriotism by encouraging permissive parenting. In 1976, when his American book sales were surpassed only by the Bible, he wrote that his previous books had been sexist and that fathers actually should participate in parenting.

The way Gen X (born between 1965 and 1981) was raised was reflected in other names we were given over the years: The Latch-Key Generation and the MTV Generation. Many of us were raised by single parents, divorced parents, or two-parent working families, which meant that, for a chunk of our childhoods, many of us lacked quality time with parents. Preschools and daycares hadn’t really come on the scene. Adults in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s seemed to be preoccupied with matters other than children: the Vietnam War, jobs, marriages, politics, the price of gas, telephone conversations, protests, soap operas, bills. We were sent to school or told to play outside while our adults tried to move up in the world, do better than the neighbors, find themselves, put food on the table, or do something they enjoyed for a change. Frankly, many Gen Xers more or less raised ourselves and each other. And we didn’t leave our teenage years looking like we’d particularly done a stellar job, which is no surprise. If you’ve ever read The Lord of the Flies, which American generations since the Boomers probably had to read at some point, you know that little good can come of children being left to fend for themselves.

We weren’t exactly alone. We had babysitters. We had 80's pop culture that grew into the 90s. We watched lots of television with reruns, commercials, and some cartoons. Many of us, at some point, lived with or visited people with cable TV that brought us HBO and MTV. Plus many of us either owned or knew someone who might let us play their Atari or Nintendo game systems. And eventually we grew old enough to become the babysitters, old enough to move from bicycles with banana seats to old cars our parents let us drive or that we paid for ourselves. 

From teachers, we heard that we didn’t meet up to standards set by the older crowd we knew as hippies or Mom and Dad (depending on the age of our parents) who cared about society, who wanted to make things better, who had a bigger sense of their world than what they saw in movies. We were told to vote, to be more involved, to care more . . . but we didn’t understand why we should care for a society that didn’t seem to care about us.

Around the time of Whitney Houston’s hit recording of the “The Greatest Love of All,” in 1986 and Hirsch’s Dictionary of Cultural Literacy in 1987, America looked at those of us trying to imitate drugged-up hair bands, and realized that society may have just lost out on the opportunity to effectively guide a generation of children. America started trying to figure out how to change, to make things better for the next generation.

In 1999 Movie Fight Club (a movie I haven’t actually seen), character Tyler Durden apparently tries to explain how Gen X felt stepping into young adulthood, “Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War . . . our depression is our lives . . . we were raised on television to believe we’d all be millionaires, movie gods, rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re starting to figure that out. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

In Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X, Tom Beudoin cites Rob Nelson and Jon Cowan’s list of 100 harshest facts for Generation X in which the following trends were noted as greeting Gen Xers in young adulthood: “a decline of real wages . . . and an increase in the length of the average workweek; an increase in young adult poverty and a concomitant decline of real income; the devastation of AIDS . . . ; the continued socioeconomic crises of many minority communities, particularly of young African American men; continuing crises of divorce and suicide; overqualification of college graduates for available jobs; unacceptable levels of violence in schools and neighborhoods; a steady drumbeat of drug abuse; and a high percentage of young adults without health insurance.”

Do we sound like whiners? Yes, I think we likely do from the perspective of other generations who had big trials such as the Great Depression, World Wars, Vietnam, etc. But our experiences are our experiences. The way a generation is raised affects the way it approaches life. And we are living as Generation X, whatever that means, and up to this point, we have been a cynical bunch.

So yes, we can be sarcastic, non-participating naysayers who throw movie quotes and song lyrics around, but I like us, and I hope to show you our good side another day. I also hope to look a bit at the generations we stemmed from so as not to have you believe I’m promoting discontent between parents, children, and grandchildren. In fact, I'd wager that most of us GenXers are actually much more pleasant and loving than descriptions of our generation depict . . . in spite of that cynical-something inside us. 

Question: Gen Xers . . . are you just going to lurk out there, reading this, and say nothing to defend us? Or perhaps you can add more insight into our common psyches?


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Gen X: life, death, sexuality, and cynicism

The Ultimate Tease

Enticed by seductive rhythms,

Yet sensing the senseless, we

Strive for something—some

Reason for living, loving, dying

All.

Witnessing birth and death, the burst

            Of beginning and end, we

Perceive whispered promises,  

Issued visions from somewhere

Beyond.

Tempted to believe we possess power we

Press for fulfillment

Almost touching always

Baited by

Provocative Elusions we

Tremble at the Strip-Tease of life.

Desire. Approach. Refrain.

All

Ways the yearning denied.

Born not on our own we Die

All alone

Grasping for dreams induced by

Chanced glimpses of More that

Keeps

All most

Coming.
                                 -Me

I also found this poem I wrote as a young adult (back when I was especially annoyingly optimistic to my friends) words that pull together what I’ve been talking about, crazy as it is may seem . . . life, death, sexuality, and cynicism pulled together in the mind of the earlier Gen Xer who was me:

I’ve hit on death and sex and intend to move on to more of what characterizes the Gen Xers amongst us. In a word, what has characterized our lives is cynicism.

As for me, I have been a PollyAnna Sunshine in the midst of cynical friends. I’ve had to step lightly through the minefield of cynicism from college on in order not to overly annoy those of my friends and peers who prefer to see the glass half empty. I may be an optimist in a pessimistic generation, but I’m pretty sure people from other generations see my sarcastic and morbid bent more vividly than do my peers . . . I'm often told as much by the looks I get. "HEY!" I want to say, "I'm the hopeful one! Don't you know?!"

Today, a midlife Gen Xer, I mourn the death of an aunt who often stepped in as a mother to me. I’m thankful to have been blessed through her life. Sorry about bringing up the death subject again; it’s just where I find myself this morning.

Blessings to you all. Until the next time, when I will attempt to understand the cynicism of Gen X  . . .

This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Let's Talk Gen X and Sex

In my house, I’m the one who talks about sex. One of our boys, during the very first talk, responded by putting pillows and then his hands over his ears, which was hardly an effective way to absorb parental guidance. We finally managed to push on through the event with him standing in the living room, facing away from me with a crocheted blanket draped over his body. I pretended that I was talking to a blue Cousin It from the Munsters.

Most recently, when I brought up something related to sex in breakfast conversation, the same boy, now a teenager, paused during a bite, stared at me blankly and then bellowed for his dad with a mouth full of chocolate chip pancakes I’d just made him, “WHY ARE YOU LETTING HER TALK?!”

Be warned, such reactions encourage me to laugh and cover the subject in greater depth.

Today, I ponder Gen X and sex. I know that the “X” in Gen X was settled upon because no one could think of an applicable term for us; as opposed to previous living generations, we appear to be difficult to define. So, our name, given by one of our own in a novel, is an unknown variable “X” as in un an algebraic formula. Still, I see the X and think “X-rated;” it’s just where my mind goes, perhaps because I see more references to “X” ratings than to algebra, or maybe I’m depraved, or more likely, I’m a product of my generation.

Several (but not many) authors have published insights into how U.S. GenXers have been shaped as sexual beings. This is every published thing I’ve found, all of it buried in pieces on related subjects. I’ve attempted to arrange the list in a fairly chronological way.

·      Gen X was the first generation of babies adults took pills to prevent.

·      We were born and raised during a time with a growing number of divorces and an increasing number of single parents in a society (where such living arrangements were not particularly accepted and certainly not the norm).

·      We, as a generation, had our first sexual experiences at earlier ages than older generations in our society.

·      AIDS came on the scene (and was focused on heavily in the media) during our teenage/elementary-aged years.

·      As older teens and young adults, our generation produced an increasing number of unmarried mothers, (more than our country had seen before).

·      During our young adulthood/teen years, U.S. opinion polls showed an increasing acceptance of sex outside of marriage.

·      Throughout our lives, we’ve had an easier accessibility to porn than older generations, (and we’ve viewed a lot of it).

·      In our early young adulthood/teen years, the US culture shifted radically in regards to homosexuality.

·      As a generation, we married later than previous generations, meaning that we’ve had more dating relationships than previous generations.

·      Throughout our young adulthood and into the age we are now, more of us have sought and pushed on through infertility treatments (unavailable to previous generations).

·      (Many of us have dated and have married people we met online.)

·      (Those smiling Viagra commercials started airing during our young adulthood.)

·      By the time we reach our 40’s Gen X women have, on average, had four sexual partners, and men have had eight.

·      At the start of midlife, one in four of us who have been married have been divorced.

·      Women may hit their sexual peak during midlife and also go through menopause, which may decrease sexual pleasure. (I summarized this to my husband as, “Women get 5 minutes to peak.”)

·      Men find themselves on the sexual decline in midlife.

·      Single women and couples can still have planned or unplanned pregnancies during midlife.

Confession . . . I couldn’t get through the list without adding just a few of my own comments. (Parentheses are thoughts I added.) I can think of much more to say, but I'll stop for now. You're welcome to add to this before I come back to it.

Questions: How would you alter or change the report? How have these experiences impacted our lives? How are we shaping future generations in response to the way we’ve been shaped? What other thoughts came to you as you skimmed the list? Do children in your lives hide under blankets when you talk to them?

This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Hello . . . and Until We Meet Again

Waking Spectre

So you kneel to the grave,

Somber bells beckoning

Buried grief, a sleeping thunder,

That rolls through even your Shadow.

You sweep the dead with a woeful volley of voicelessness.

And you feel that I hear

More that you do not say

And you envision more

That I no longer live;

As I enter this transient spectrum of passage,

I leave you for life

As you leave me—for death.

—something I wrote several years back as I mourned someone I loved.

While I don’t know where this blog will eventually head, during the first few months, I’ll consider topics especially relevant to GenXers (those born between 1965 and 1981) as we meet midlife (that is . . . as we jump over that 40^th birthday and live in the early terrain beyond 40).

Ever since midlife has been seen as an adult developmental stage, those living out midlife have, in their turn, been called “The Sandwich Generation” . . . not because midlife is a time too busy to eat anything other than sandwiches, but because a large number of those in midlife find themselves sandwiched between tending to the care of aging parents and to the care of their own children. Our parents have lived through this age, and now it’s our turn. Of course, more of us have remained unmarried, without children, or have married later or started families later than previous generations, so our sandwich years taste a little different than our parents’ sandwich years did, I guess.

As for me, the one who watched my mom die in the aftermath of a car accident when I was three years old and who then found myself taking care of my dad and younger brother, I’ve been some sort of sandwich most of my life (my husband would probably say a tam and cheese sandwich). Lately I've seen that many of the rest of you are also somewhere in a sandwich, very much in the middle of childhood families and what you've been creating your life to be. Even harder to swallow, I see that our parents are starting to die of natural causes as time passes.

And so we find ourselves living out the sandwich years, learning how to mourn, perhaps for the first time. Our mourning is happening in a fast-paced society that doesn’t have time for death or mourning and that doesn’t even like to say the words “death” or “dying,” almost as though the words were curses. Mourning is not depression, and it isn't weakness to be avoided. It’s a way to honor someone we love who has stepped into the next realm of being, a realm that we will also step into one day. It’s a way of remembering. It’s a way of saying, "Until we meet again . . ." It’s a way of honoring life itself. I've discovered that mourning is life and strength.

A bright yellow wall with red, stenciled letters greets people as they walk into my home, calling out, “LIVE WELL. LAUGH OFTEN. LOVE MUCH.” I think mourning death is part of living well, that the best mourning is done when our faces are tear-streaked and our sides are aching from laughter as we tell funny stories about the person we’ve just ushered into eternity, the person we'll always love.

Question: How does YOUR midlife sandwich taste lately?


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com