Sometimes

...people just need to face plant with reality. Just saying.

Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy http://huff.to/1effgBE via @HuffPostCollege

 Say hi to Lucy.


Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She's also part of a yuppie ]]> <![CDATA[ culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y.

I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group -- I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.
So Lucy's enjoying her GYPSY life, and she's very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing:
Lucy's kind of unhappy.
To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place. It comes down to a simple formula:


It's pretty straightforward -- when the reality of someone's life is better than they had expected, they're happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they're unhappy.

To provide some context, let's start by bringing Lucy's parents into the discussion:


Lucy's parents were born in the '50s -- they're Baby Boomers. They were raised by Lucy's grandparents, members of the G.I. Generation, or "the Greatest Generation," who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II, and were most definitely not GYPSYs.


Lucy's Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers. They wanted her parents' careers to have greener grass than their own, and Lucy's parents were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves. Something like this:


They were taught that there was nothing stopping them from getting to that lush, green lawn of a career, but that they'd need to put in years of hard work to make it happen.



After graduating from being insufferable hippies, Lucy's parents embarked on their careers. As the '70s, '80s, and '90s rolled along, the world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Lucy's parents did even better than they expected to. This left them feeling gratified and optimistic.



With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their own parents, Lucy's parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility. And they weren't alone. Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches.
This left GYPSYs feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point where their parents' goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity didn't really do it for them. A GYPSY-worthy lawn has flowers.


This leads to our first fact about GYPSYs:
GYPSYs Are Wildly Ambitious


The GYPSY needs a lot more from a career than a nice green lawn of prosperity and security. The fact is, a green lawn isn't quite exceptional or unique enough for a GYPSY. Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream.

Cal Newport points out that "follow your passion" is a catchphrase that has only gotten going in the last 20 years, according to Google's Ngram viewer, a tool that shows how prominently a given phrase appears in English print over any period of time. The same Ngram viewer shows that the phrase "a secure career" has gone out of style, just as the phrase "a fulfilling career" has gotten hot.






To be clear, GYPSYs want economic prosperity just like their parents did -- they just also want to be fulfilled by their career in a way their parents didn't think about as much.

But something else is happening too. While the career goals of Gen Y as a whole have become much more particular and ambitious, Lucy has been given a second message throughout her childhood as well:



This would probably be a good time to bring in our second fact about GYPSYs:
GYPSYs Are Delusional
"Sure," Lucy has been taught, "everyone will go and get themselves some fulfilling career, but I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and life path will stand out amongst the crowd." So on top of the generation as a whole having the bold goal of a flowery career lawn, each individual GYPSY thinks that he or she is destined for something even better --
A shiny unicorn on top of the flowery lawn.



So why is this delusional? Because this is what all GYPSYs think, which defies the definition of special:
spe-cial | 'speSHel |adjectivebetter, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.

According to this definition, most people are not special -- otherwise "special" wouldn't mean anything.
Even right now, the GYPSYs reading this are thinking, "Good point... but I actually am one of the few special ones" -- and this is the problem.
A second GYPSY delusion comes into play once the GYPSY enters the job market. While Lucy's parents' expectation was that many years of hard work would eventually lead to a great career, Lucy considers a great career an obvious given for someone as exceptional as she, and for her it's just a matter of time and choosing which way to go. Her pre-workforce expectations look something like this:


Unfortunately, the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they're actually quite hard. Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build -- even the ones with no flowers or unicorns on them -- and even the most successful people are rarely doing anything that great in their early or mid-20s.

But GYPSYs aren't about to just accept that.

Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor and GYPSY expert, has researched this, finding that Gen Y has "unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback," and "an inflated view of oneself." He says that "a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren't in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting."
For those hiring members of Gen Y, Harvey suggests asking the interview question, "Do you feel you are generally superior to your coworkers/classmates/etc., and if so, why?" He says that "if the candidate answers yes to the first part but struggles with the 'why,' there may be an entitlement issue. This is because entitlement perceptions are often based on an unfounded sense of superiority and deservingness. They've been led to believe, perhaps through overzealous self-esteem building exercises in their youth, that they are somehow special but often lack any real justification for this belief."
And since the real world has the nerve to consider merit a factor, a few years out of college Lucy finds herself here:


Lucy's extreme ambition, coupled with the arrogance that comes along with being a bit deluded about one's own self-worth, has left her with huge expectations for even the early years out of college. And her reality pales in comparison to those expectations, leaving her "reality - expectations" happy score coming out at a negative.
And it gets even worse. On top of all this, GYPSYs have an extra problem that applies to their whole generation:
GYPSYs Are Taunted
Sure, some people from Lucy's parents' high school or college classes ended up more successful than her parents did. And while they may have heard about some of it from time to time through the grapevine, for the most part they didn't really know what was going on in too many other peoples' careers.
Lucy, on the other hand, finds herself constantly taunted by a modern phenomenon: Facebook Image Crafting.
Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation. This leaves Lucy feeling, incorrectly, like everyone else is doing really well, only adding to her misery:



So that's why Lucy is unhappy, or at the least, feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate. In fact, she's probably started off her career perfectly well, but to her, it feels very disappointing.

Here's my advice for Lucy:
1) Stay wildly ambitious. The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success. The specific direction may be unclear, but it'll work itself out -- just dive in somewhere.
2) Stop thinking that you're special. The fact is, right now, you're not special. You're another completely inexperienced young person who doesn't have all that much to offer yet. You can become special by working really hard for a long time.

3) Ignore everyone else. Other people's grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today's image crafting world, other people's grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you'll never have any reason to envy others.
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I don't know if you know who you are until you lose who you are.

Dear M,

I still remember the first day, with a tear sliding down my cheek. I was reading your text on the plane while thinking which could be the next time I would see you again.

It is extremely difficult to start your own way and realising all the way you still need to walk. Firstly the end of this way seems absurdly boundless and ridiculously far from were you are. But you told me once that we need just to think in the next step, and suddenly when we realise, we just need to look backwards and notice all the way we just walked. It was not even that far!

You and I both, knew that I have learned too many things for such a short time. I cannot remember a single day of this year that I didn't learned, watched or experienced anything new. Neither a single day I didn't missed you, though.

 Anyway, the road always continues, and we still needing to grow and to learn as much as we are able to, because enthusiasm and knowledge enrich life and fulfill the soul. It has been an overwhelming year in a lot of senses, I wish I can share with you such a rewarding feeling, but I am sure you can imagine, you always have been extremely good at guessing what was going on. I am partially sorry for being such a difficult girl.

In your letter you said I am now over age. I know it have not been the best birthday in my life. But I think that birthdays are like Christmas, you need to be with your people and siblings in order to enjoy them, or maybe that's just a social convection and I am just being silly here. I hope L is not reading this right now, because he would be fairly pissed off with my thoughts. Heh, he is lovely :).
But even with the best party I know how much has this year meant. Language, people, shops, habitues, culture, love, cities, landscapes, parties, protocols, work and paperwork...
I even learned how to miss people properly.

Now on, I know I need to continue working, but I don't particularly want you are proud of me. I want to share this everything with you in order you to help me not to get rid of it easily. I want to keep it in my life, with you :).

Thank you very much for everything, and D's pics.
I could never be grateful enough.

Love,

V

'A Day of One's Own'

'Twas on a Thursday morning 

When I beheld my darling 

She looked so neat and charming 

In every high degree 

She looked so neat and nimble, 

O A-washing of her linen, O

Dashing away with the smoothing iron 

Dashing away with the smoothing iron 

She stole my heart away.'

****

Because the idea is that the written word has the potential of just dying on you. An so even when Socrates dies, he says, if you're sorry for me, if your crying about my dying, cry about me only if the word dies on us.

You will never die on me. I promise.

Today again

Thank you for everything.
Always.

Love,

xxx

"Color my mind with the chaos of trouble"

****

"These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain."

(Narrative of the Live of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, Written by Himself)

'Fate goes ever as fate must' (Beowulf)

"These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain."
(Narrative of the Live of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, Written by Himself)

To read, to read, and to read again.

Read, read, read.





Mama told me not to come ;).

"In these stones horizons sing"

Dear Santa,

[…] No. I’m afraid this is not another usual Christmas letter.

Well, what can I say? It’s tough when you spend a great amount of your life studying a language, reading an unspeakable quantity of books and information. When you start watching all films, listening to music and being completely overturned working in a specific language with so few inducements, only for a kind of stealthy passion. Nevertheless I can’t find the words for that sort of things, letters… who can?

If you ask me maybe I can’t say a hundred per cent a sure answer for why I am here or why I study English, because since a year ago I never thought about the possibility of being abroad so far from home. But I realised that as they say, home is where the heart is and moreover I always thought that my country are my friends. On the end, I think home can also be an ascetic ground floor in an unpronounceable residence. Our dusty, noisy and delightful mess –and you love it-.
On the other hand, I’m not writing this letter in order to flatter you or tell you empty words because they will be gone with the wind and, besides, you know I hate flattery, I’m not hypocrite, sorry ;), and in fact I am a kind of teasing you, in order that you react. But still, I think I’m so glad to met you, I like your passion and dedication in your commitments, although at the same time you love continuous changes. You are an eccentric and spicy person, difficult to find and impossible to define.

Regarding me, I’ve been spending so much time trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. Not even for myself, I think I should improve, but I also find it hard to always know that all can I do is improve myself rather than enjoy what I achieved. Nothing comes for free (as a song sais). Or maybe as you say, I think “too much”, but you know, I’m not a simple person.

Our lives are so different; plenty of times I just don’t understand you although I try hard; as the Irish boy could say, “don’t worries”, nobody understands at least a seventy per cent of me. Maybe did you decide it wasn’t worth it, I would never tried to know, but perhaps you are not the person you say you strive to be. I only hope you can achieve it some day :). I’m not angry, possibly hurt, and kind of empty but I really want to be someone important, as we used to. Moreover I want you to consider the importance of those words.

And at this point I’m just kind of writing this because I can.

In short, when you buy a coffee you are not only paying for that drink very dark-brown, sometimes of dubious origin and “additives” or “preservatives”, nor paying only a small dose of stimulant drug that is so good on cold sleepy mornings. It is not the intense bitter taste what you want, or maybe yes, but not just that. What you really buy with a coffee, but you never noticed, it is a time of peace, tranquillity and relaxation. You are buying difficult decisions and bad shots, or maybe the while that you owed to an old friend. You might be paying for an excuse to be with that person, or you want a dose of inspiration, motivation and desire to work. There are people who really are buying a weapon, a very hot shower upon the enemy, or maybe the power to say something silly to the person that you love.

Or maybe it means nothing, and I am being silly narrating that stuff. Who actually cares?

I don’t know if I am satisfied with my work, I don’t know many things which seem to be in order in my life, but if they weren’t it definitively would not be my life. It would be someone else’s life, but not mine. And probably I wouldn’t be here, and my work would not fulfil me as it currently does. So, I think I cannot complain, thank you very much for the great part that includes you, flatties. And as a friend says: “Let the good times roll”.

Love,

xx

***

"Bilbo Baggins: You can promise that I will come back?Gandalf: No. And if you do, you will not be the same."

(The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)


You know what they say. Cold hands, warm heart.

Syntax error

El Old English es un amante caprichoso, pero de vez en cuando también es agradecido:

"Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."

"Mind must be the firmer, heart the braver, courage must be the greater, as our strength diminishes"

(The Battle of Maldon)

"La mente debe ser más firme, el corazón más valiente, el valor debe ser mayor, ya que nuestra fuerza disminuye" 

Pandora's box is opened

Cheers.

xxx

All things that happen in such a short time...

Flattie's Facts...

"Da Rules for Secret Santa
1. Salary cap of between 15-20 pounds (this may be exceeded if you really like the person who you happened to draw… just remember however that your Secret Santa mightn't be as generous).
2. Presents to be exchanged on Thursday 13th December, if anyone fails to present a gift at this time will be punished by having to sleep in Ed's room for the night, with Ed sleeping in the perpetrators room.
If Ed is said person (the perpetrator), we may each have one cut of his hair (using only kitchen scissors, (cos demz da rules)).
3. If you genuinely have no clue what to purchase for your person, Booze is always welcomed with open arms (whoever has ME, something german wouldn't go amiss!)
And finally,
4. Selection boxes and chocolate coins may only be used to bolster the amount spent on your Secret Santa gift, with your main gift having to exceed 10 pounds.
In other words, don't be a lazy cock face and buy 5 selection boxes as a gift.
DEMZ DA RULES!
Thanks chaps,
Merry Christmas!
Love from,
Chief Director and chair of the Secret Santa Comitee,
Luke
xo"

"El cuento terminaba diciendo que quien lee nunca muere. Miré al mar y me llevé el revolver a la boca y apreté el gatillo. Se borró hasta el planeta extrasolar gemelo de la Tierra. Pero seguí oyendo a John Lennon en la radio y confirmé que, más allá de la muerte , continuamos viviendo al menos por momentos. Porque continuaba allí, leyendo. Y el cuento parecía diferente, sin final".

"The Immortal Bard" by Isaac Asimov

"Oh, yes," said Dr. Phineas Welch, "I can bring back the spirits of the illustrious dead."
He was a little drunk, or maybe he wouldn't have said it. Of course, it was perfectly all right to get a little drunk at the annual Christmas party.
Scott Robertson, the school's young English instructor, adjusted his glasses and looked to right and left to see if they were overheard. "Really, Dr. Welch."
"I mean it. And not just the spirits. I bring back the bodies, too."
"I wouldn't have said it were possible," said Robertson primly.
"Why not? A simple matter of temporal transference."
"You mean time travel? But that's quite-uh-unusual."
"Not if you know how."
"Well, how, Dr. Welch?"
"Think I'm going to tell you?" asked the physicist gravely. He looked vaguely about for another drink and didn't find any. He said, "I brought quite a few back. Archimedes, Newton, Galileo. Poor fellows."
"Didn't they like it here? I should think they'd have been fascinated by our modern science," said Robertson. He was beginning to enjoy the coversation.
"Oh, they were. They were. Especially Archimedes. I thought he'd go mad with joy at first after I explained a little of it in some Greek I'd boned up on, but no-no-"
"What was wrong?"
"Just a different culture. They couldn't get used to our way of life. They got terribly lonely and frightened. I had to send them back."
"That's too bad."
"Yes. Great minds, but not flexible minds. Not universal. So I tried Shakespeare."
"What?" yelled Robertson. This was getting closer to home.
"Don't yell, my boy," said Welch. "It's bad manners."
"Did you say you brought back Shakespeare?"
"I did. I needed someone with a universal mind; someone who knew people well enough to be able to live with them centuries way from his own time. Shakespeare was the man. I've got his signature. As a memento, you know."
"On you?" asked Robertson, eyes bugging.
"Right here." Welch fumbled in one vest pocket after another. "Ah, here it is."
A little piece of pasteboard was passed to the instructor. On one side it said: "L. Klein & Sons, Wholesale Hardware." On the other side, in straggly script, was written, "Will^m Shakesper."
A wild surmise filled Robertson. "What did he look like?"
"Not like his pictures. Bald and an ugly mustache. He spoke in a thick brogue. Of course, I did my best to please him with our times. I told him we thought highly of his plays and still put them on the boards. In fact, I said we thought they were the greatest pieces of literature in the English language, maybe in any language."
"Good. Good," said Robertson breathlessly.
"I said people had written volumes of commentaries on his plays. Naturally he wanted to see one and I got one for him from the library."
"And?"
"Oh, he was fascinated. Of course, he had trouble with the current idioms and references to events since 1600, but I helped out. Poor fellow. I don't think he ever expected such treatment. He kept saying, 'God ha' mercy! What cannot be racked from words in five centuries? One could wring, methinks, a flood from a damp clout!'"
"He wouldn't say that."
"Why not? He wrote his plays as quickly as he could. He said he had to on account of the deadlines. He wrote Hamlet in less than six months. The plot was an old one. He just polished it up."
"That's all they do to a telescope mirror. Just polish it up," said the English instructor indignantly.
The physicist disregarded him. He made out an untouched cocktail on the bar some feet away and sidled toward it. "I told the immortal bard that we even gave college courses in Shakespeare."
"I give one."
"I know. I enrolled him in your evening extension course. I never saw a man so eager to find out what posterity thought of him as poor Bill was. He worked hard at it."
"You enrolled William Shakespeare in my course?" mumbled Robertson. Even as an alcholic fantasy, the thought staggered him. And was it an alcoholic fantasy? He was beginning to recall a bald man with a queer way of talking....
"Not under his real name, of course," said Dr. Welch. "Never mind what he went under. It was a mistake, that's all. A big mistake. Poor fellow." He had the cocktail now and shook his head at it.
"Why was it a mistake? What happened?"
"I had to send him back to 1600," roared Welch indignantly. "How much humiliation do you think a man can stand?"
"What humiliation are you talking about?"
Dr. Welch tossed off the cocktail. "Why, you poor simpleton, you flunked him."

“You Should Date an Illiterate Girl”

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

(Charles Warnke)