I’m a boomer and I walked head-on into the Sixties with all its ramifications. It was self-evident to everyone of my age that our parents simply didn’t get it. Didn’t understand the long hair, the alienation, the hatred for the Vietnam War, on and on. There was a language gap for sure — but that wasn’t it. One or two hundred words or phrases didn’t make us so different from our parents. We were born into an era of jets, nuclear bombs and satellites orbiting the earth. A war played out on television every night and communication lines that spanned the entire globe. The difference was maybe 40 years in minutes and hours, but it was a 1000 years in terms of population growth, technology and the world simply getting smaller.

The Gen Xers were born into a similar model that was spinning even more rapidly than it was for the Boomers. An iPad with more computing power than the first Space Shuttle had. Sending digital images to New Zealand in 1/100 of a second while riding the Ferris wheel at Coney Island.

Technology far outpaces our own human abilities to communicate with one another in meaningful ways. We measure our own advancements, our own hipness by how well we interact with electronics. And electronics often dictates how well we eventually interact with each other.

I just don’t see a huge difference between Boomers and Gen X and Millennials and so on. We have so much in common, so many of the same things that we cherish and feel strongly about, I wonder where this “conflict” originates from?

I understood my mother a whole lot better at 40 than I did at 14. Sure, my brain finished growing and common sense had enough time to take hold. But I think it was this language/technology/generation perspective gap that finally narrowed and understanding filled the space.

On the surface, there are differences, no argument here. But underneath, not so sure. 😉