Down with 2016, Up with...Squirrel!

Last night many people bid good riddance to 2016 as if the strife and uncertainty experienced of late were confined by the calendar. It seemed to be the poster year for entropy, as evidence mounted that culture, politics, and individual responsibility is deteriorating. The thing that annoyed and frightened me most in the last year has been the short attention span of the general population.

I recently shared an interview with Simon Sinek in which he summarized the difficulty with managing millennials in the workplace as a combination of entitlement, impatience, and a lack of toughness. Now I shared this because I agree with it, and I appreciate his point that their stereotypical self-image is fragile. However, the basis for the millennial self-concept is no shallower than that of the rest of us.

Having spoken to large groups on effective leadership of the different generations I have had many conversations with the much-maligned millennials. They have encouraged me with their dedication to finding balance between work and home life, and their desire to make a difference. They also deserve their reputation. But, they are not alone.

Every generation since world war two, from Baby-Boomers on down have increased in the same characteristics that millennials wear like a badge. I say that the major difference between my generation and theirs is that we hide our selfishness, impatience, and lack of discipline. Millennials see it as normal, our culture never told them to hide it.  

We are in the habit of seeing the next generation as clueless miscreants. Someone recently said, “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise”, but wait no that was not recent, that was Socrates. This is not a new problem; people have had short attention spans for discipline and hard work for some time now. How often does the old testament tell the story of a hero setting things right only to be followed by the statement ‘and then every man did what was right in his own eyes’.

Our cultural attention span is short and our lack of consideration for the ripples of our actions is frightening. We need look no further than our recent political season to see how reactive we have become. Even with politics aside we lack the discipline to think deeply on social matters and maters of faith. We seem to hate uncertainty. We have become so impatient that we settle for other people’s answers that are easily accessed online. We do less study and discussion of hard questions. And we refuse to live with uncertainly. We would rather change our opinion of God and his desires than to reconcile hard questions through sustained discussion toward understanding.

We are all entitled and undisciplined until life knocks us down. Some stay down and call life unfair. Some just keep getting up and the eventual product is character.  Many who keep getting up find purpose and self image in their relationship with God and their desire grow into his design. There are people in every generation that refuse to settle for worthless easy answers. Chief Justice Holmes said it well, “For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn’t give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.”

As we begin 2017 I encourage anyone who will listen to commit to the discipline of deeper patience with disagreement and uncertainty. I resolve to seek understanding with grace and commitment. I am convinced that God is good, that life is complicated, and that we can still trust him when we are uncertain. We do not need to agree to be at peace, but we do need to stop being so reactive. Self-imposed overstimulation is rewiring our brains, but we there is good news. We can develop new habits that reject shallow and simple answers. We can learn to tolerate the discomfort of uncertainty and find answers and grace on the far side of complexity.