History Repeats

If you are older, giving advice to young people is no longer easy. And young people seldom or often don’t listen to advice from older people.

This piece from the Wall Street Journal and titled, ‘Want my advice? Um, Not Really’ addresses this issue.

This is a quote from a 28 year old woman: ‘The older generations totally mean well,’ she says, ‘but they’re giving advice based on things they did in the past, when times were different.’

Older people have always offered advice to younger people, with words of wisdom culled from their memories of youth. And, of course, in every era, young people have found advice from elders to be outdated and ineffectual. These days however, given how fast the world is changing, there’s been a clear widening of the advice gap.

It’s rooted in a devaluation of accumulated wisdom, a leveling of the relationships between the old and young. On many fronts, people from Generation Y –now ages 16 to 32 – assume their peers know best. They doubt those of us who are older can truly understand their needs and concerns.

‘Among tips from young adults for their advice giving elders:

Question your assumptions:
What worked in your youth might have little relevance today.

Offer suggestions, not pronouncements:
Say ‘you could’ not ‘you should’.

Welcome a dialogue:
Listen, don’t lecture; you’ll learn things and give better advice

Resist saying:
‘When I was young’.

Don’t belittle technology:
If you’re critical of social media, young people may dismiss you as a dinosaur.

Accept your limitations:
The young understand the world today. Sometimes the best advice is: ‘Trust your instincts’.

If you ask many older people today about the advice they accepted or rejected when they were young I bet many would say that they learned a lot from their elders when they were willing to listen.

What’s that quote about forgetting the lessons of history? Oh that’s right you young people never learned it and obviously you won’t listen to any of us older people so I guess you’ll have to learn it the hard way.