When I see people my age post stuff like, “I don’t understand kids these days” and “Life was so much better when we were kids” and “Today’s music is awful”, it makes me want to say, “Gag me with a spoon!” (btw – if you remember that phrase then I might be talking to you). I mean come on, people, we WERE those kids forty years ago! Have you really forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager? Have you really forgotten that grumpy old farts used to say the same things about you and your music?
When I was a child, I had the idea that once you reach a certain age (old), that you just started liking “old people” music. What that meant for me as a kid is I assumed that once I got to be my parents’ age that I would only like Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, and big band music. It didn’t occur to me until much later that you carry the music of your youth with you as you age.
In the same way, you carry yourself with you as you grow older. You don’t stop being you. You grow, you change, and become a different version but you are still you. With all your challenges, successes, foibles, and triumphs. There is an Imagine Dragons song with the lyric, “There is no tomorrow without a yesterday.” Think about that. As an adult, that’s pretty deep and profound. For someone younger though, while they can get that conceptually, they can’t feel it at the depth of someone who has a whole bunch of yesterdays.
So why be resistant and judgy about the next generation? What is it in us as we age that makes us distrustful, and sometimes downright mean about change? I imagine it’s fear. But we don’t have to react that way, we can choose something different. We can embrace new things and recognize that we don’t (never did and never will) have it all figured out. Now, that’s not to discount some wisdom that we may gain along the way but rather than using that wisdom to judge, I’d prefer we use it to encourage and support those that follow after us.
Whatever is 