7 Eye-Opening Misunderstandings Younger Minds Have About Older Generations

4. Old Generations don’t always understand your impatience.

Seriously, sometimes we don’t. We look at your life and you seem to be doing okay. So, when you are frustrated you don’t have everything yet – or aren’t where you want to be in your career – we don’t always “get it”. Yet, we know we were probably impatient in our younger years. There was more of a sense of “work your way up” in our generation, but we often saw unfairness in who got to move up and how.

5. We often understand what you’re feeling more than you know.

You think because we are older, and aren’t experiencing some of the issues you’re experiencing, we don’t understand the frustrations you face. It is a new day and the world is much different.

But the things you experience today are some of the same issues we experienced – just without the texting or social media sharing possibilities for them. We struggled (and mostly still do) in relationships, careers, with our parents, trying to find our place, fears about our future – all of those things.

6. Older Generations aren’t as different as you think.

We see life from a different viewpoint. We are further along in life. We have more experiences – more laughs, more heartaches, more disappointments, more failures – and all of this makes us see the world a little differently.

Yet, we aren’t as different as you might think. We have the same desires you have – for mutual respect, trusted relationships, workplace fairness and opportunity. We may disagree on how to get there, but we want the world to be a better place as you do.

7. We aren’t as crazy about all the tech advances – when it comes to real relationships.

Sure, we love the new gadgets – and appreciate you for helping us learn them, but we prefer real conversations with people too. Sure, we’ve taken advantage of the ease of social media to keep up with loved ones. We ARE Facebook these days. We can be guilty of emailing instead of walking down to your office. We fall into the trap of overworking and under-relating to people in our life.

But, just like you, we value genuine relationships. We even like “hanging out” sometimes. Hanging out with your generation are some of our favorite times.

Those are a few misunderstandings I’ve observed. Got any to add?

This article on misconceptions about older generations originally appeared here, and is used by permission. Check out Ron’s leadership podcast where we discuss issues of leadership in a practical way. Plus, check out the other Lifeway Leadership Podcasts.