Baby Boomers & Gen Y

Someone shared an article in Huffington Post about how Gen Y views career and relationship. An extract reads as follow:

"A job used to be a long-term arrangement whereby you provided skills and your employer provided compensation for said skills - end of story. Today's workplace seems to be much more than just a marketplace. For millennials, 'work' has almost taken on a spiritual obligation - it has become a place where we are meant to find meaning and redeem not only ourselves but also the world around us."
 
"They want a meaningful job, but what if they don't want to give up their 'quality of life'? They want the freedom of running a business but how can they do it without the risk? They want to switch industries but can they do it without starting at the bottom all over again"

The article also describes what the millennials expect of a relationship which used to take almost a whole village to provide including; safety and desire, belonging but identity, continuity but mystery/awe, familiarity and novelty, predictability and surprise".

Now I wonder what is it that makes my generation, the baby boomers, so easily contented. When we started out on a career it was aptly described as selling our skill or service just to earn a salary to pay back our parents and help support the family. We waited patiently for the promotion that came with modest salary increment and warily registered our interest in another role in the company whilst careful not to be seen as trying to kick the incumbent out of the coveted job. We didn't really expect our job to make our lives fulfilling and resorted to hobbies and extra curricular activities to fill the gap. What a far cry from the Gen Ys who expect the job to be challenging yet provide work life balance, well paid yet meaningful to society , secure yet adventurous. (Incidentally the Gen Ys so described by the writer refers to many well educated professionals in London and NY and may not apply to many Singapore youths who  focus on earning big money above all else. Their expectations especially for quantum job advancement with work life balance is the same though). What I am trying to figure out is why we, the baby boomers, could wait whilst the Gen Ys want it almost immediately. Didn't we wait until mid-life crisis before taking a serious milestone review? Are we pathetic fools to have waited so long?

The same goes with our attitude towards relationship. How come we could tolerate the lack of surprises, romance, adventure and often lack of "identity" for many women? How did we live for years as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and where mystery comes only in the form of a deeply discounted Batam getaway booked at a Nata Travel fair?

I guess the biggest strength that baby boomer have is "patience" cultivated in our upbringing. Someone once describes patience as the ability to bear with unpleasantness. I guess we could because we have seen worse in early years or in our parents' lives and we are appreciative of safety and certainty. We don't want to rock the boat unnecessarily.

However we have also to bear in mind the boat may not carry us far. As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west we could also surely be found lifeless in the boat of stagnant waters.