Seeking Flowers and Unicorns, Too

A few days ago I found an interesting article about "Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy". It discussed how while Baby Boomers had worked hard towards something, and extremely happy with lush green lawn, the Gen Y are told that they are 'special' since childhood. So in their career, they expect 'a shiny unicorn on top of the flowery lawn'.

Baby Boomers are the generations who were born in 1950s. They were raised by "G.I Generation" or the "Greatest Generations" who grew up during the World Wars and Depression period. While Gen Y were the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. This article also coined another term within the Gen Y; the Gen Y Protagonists and Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. According to the article, a GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie and who always think that they are the main character of a very special story.

This GYPSY attitude, according to this article what makes most Gen Y an unhappy bunch. Baby Boomers were taught that nothing can be achieved overnight, and envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves; this was what they called the "green lawn". But everything must be achieved through hard work, and no instant success. 

With the hard work, most Baby Boomers achieved more than what they had expected, which left them happy and satisfied. 

With this happiness and satisfaction, these Baby Boomers mostly raised their children, the Gen Y with a lot of optimism and unbounded possibilities. They told their children that they can be whatever they wanted to be, thus Gen Y had this special protagonist identity deep within themselves. Now Gen Y wanted to have "green lawn with flowers". A simple green lawn is not enough anymore.

Because these Gen Y especially GYPSY's had the impression that they were special, while their destinations maybe very clear, but do they know how to get there? 

The foundation of the journey is crucial because it sets us down the right path. There's no shortcut to success. It take years, a lot of sweat and tears, for most successful people to achieve what they have achieved. But according to the article, Gen Y can't accept this reality. 

The article also quite blunt in identifying these GYPSY as wildly ambitious, but delusional while always opened to being taunted by their peers and other things. Success is a gradual achievement. There is nothing sudden about it. People may just suddenly notice and talk about it. 

If we are indeed ambitious, as what most Gen Y thinks they are, we need to decide what our gradual factor(s) is(are). One day, everything will become apparent, whether we do things gradually well or terrible. 

We can't tell people that we are hardworking, we can only show them.

We can't tell people that our work excellent, we can only show them.

We can't tell people that we are an open-minded person, we can only show them.

We can't tell people that we are tolerant, we can only show them. 

In short, actions speaks louder than words. But actions take time to show results. It takes a lot of effort, blood, sweat and tears. However, we can take a deep satisfaction that we are not going to be a 'one time wonder'. At the end, it may give us the lawn with the flowers, and maybe, the unicorns too.

Thank you for reading my two cent worth of thought. I love to hear your opinion on the matter, especially from the Gen Y. Sometime, we the Baby Boomers are a bit hard-headed. It comes with age. So please forgive us. LOL

Source : Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy

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Comments

  • Daylight, you seemed to be a very grounded Gen Y. It's refreshing to hear such opinion from a Gen Y that know they need to grow up and not everything is served in silver platter. 

  • According to your article, i belong to the Gen Y. I have to admit it, that the idea of privileged oneself always appears in my mind. But Thank god, a hard time in the past keeps me grounded in reality. I think Gen Y too slow to realize the reality, many are aware of it after it was too late.

  • OI rysperski! It's nice to hear an opinion from a caveman like you. LOL. 

  • Hi Sono. Thank you for reading. I belong to G.I Generation - the Greatest Generation, or maybe well before that :D After all, I am more than 200 years old already. LOL

  • Oi Noa,

          What can I, a pre-X generation representative say? Dinosaurs are just out of date nowadays, so to say. But from what I noticed, even in the era of cavemen, the generation gap existed. Maybe it wasn't so distinct as it is now, but I rest prefectly convinced that the young caveboy and cavegirl though exactly the same about their parents as do our contemporaty kids ...hmmm ..maybe the words at the cavetime were somewhat different, but the idea was the very same. 

        Speaking from my own experience as a father, grandfather and great-grandfather, all I can say is that I soon realised that if I tried to impose my dogmas to my kids, they would be a complete misfit in their society which in turn would make them even more frustrated and unhappy. It is really very hard to find the "golden midstream" when behaviour paradigmas are so drastically different between two neighbouring generations, not to mention the ones farther down the time axis.

         To my reckonning, each generation has to find, work out their own rules and priorities, of course it would be well seen by the older generation if the younger ones took some examples from them....good examples, I mean. Hmmmm...btw..and who is to judge what are good and bad examples....LOL.

  • 2388797636?profile=original

  • 2388797630?profile=originalYou tried comprehensively to convey your message to us with graphical statistic. I liked your efforts. I had heard about baby boomer and baby buster.
    My generation is increasingly beset by bad economic news and we can only look on our elders with envy.  By 2025, the FSA says, there will only be two employed people for each retired/inactive person over 50, half the current level.
    Miss, noaslpls, you're hard worker lady, are you belongs to baby boomer era? :) Have a nice time.

  • A little Firefly, you will be always the baby of EC. LOL

  • sewar, I hope these Gen Y will realise soon that there's nothing easy in this world. They have to work hard in order to achieve something. Effort is really the key, not just wishing.

  • Hahaha Eric, I can be your assistant and bring my own big pliers to pull out all those 'baby teeth'. I do hope those Gen Y will not be cooking in the oven too long because future generations are resting on them.

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