generation "?"

I am starting to wonder whether our generation of 20 and 30 year olds are on the right track.. Or at least whether my "category" of 20 and 30 year olds… The career people, the professionals… We're single or married or "partnered" or not, but we are all living the same lifestyle. For ourselves. Most of my extended family in my generation are living a similar life… Wandering, wondering, working, traveling, moving around, unsettled.. Only 4 of my cousins have had kids, and I'm 29 years old. And I have 25 cousins. 7 of them are married… Granted, many of them are much younger than me, but the precedent has been set. Almost all of the married cousins were well-established into their careers and older (25+) by the time they settled down. By my age, most of my parents, aunts, and uncles were married and done having kids. Yet here we are.. 

So what does it mean? Are we "liberated" because of the freedoms we have via ease of traveling, improvement of obstetric care allowing us to postpone childbirth until later and later? Is it because our life expectancy is longer? Is it because our careers are beginning so much later in life compared to prior generations because of the Academic Gold Mine that post-college programs have managed to impose upon society, at whatever burden of debt they wish? 

Or, have we lost some important sense of ability to be at peace with ourselves and our place in this world because of our freedoms and accessibilities to the larger world? Will we ever be able to feel truly satisfied enough to just sit still and accept that this is our time and place? I have been thinking about this topic in the context of 2 separate places… 1) Guatemala. My host family had next to nothing, although they were amongst the "upper middle class" of that area. Yet, they seemed to have a very satisfied demeanor about their lifestyle and welcomed me into it so openly. They did not have the option of leaving that place or that home. They had rarely even been outside of that town. They had a single mo-ped to split amongst their 7-member household. The husband went off to the US to make more money and never came back, leaving all 3 generations of women behind in a house that was handed down to them, built by the previous generation. But it was almost as if their limitations brought them peace in the here and now. Their dining room was the gathering spot where everyone would meet up after school or work to just visit and hang out. I'd sit in there to listen to their conversations in Spanish, trying desperately to understand what the heck they were talking about.. But whether or not I understood the content, it was clear what was happening. They were enjoying each other's company. It had the distinct feeling of satisfaction and happiness I felt when visiting with my extended family and grandparents in Valentine, LA, every Monday after piano lessons. There weren't any computers or internet. They had a TV that went neglected more often than not because it wasn't nearly as fun or interesting as listening to what was going on around the dinner table. Joking, talking about what's new in life, listening to stories about the old days, giving each other solicited or unsolicited advice, playing with whichever new baby was around, eating sliced cantaloupe, playing pretend in the yard with nothing more than some woven pine-needles for princess crowns and a few trees for the castles… 

I compare this to the typical modern day middle class American family.. I may be stereotyping, but I don't really think I am. We just don't do that very often any more. Even my own family, who I think are actually better than most families about enjoying quality time, most often sit around with our own individual laptops or iPads, play on our increasingly complex video games, sometimes 4 TV's on different stations in different rooms at the same time.. Then there are these new, intolerable yuppie parents, who insist on teaching their toddlers sign language and spanish and reflexology and who develop more hangups about food choices by the time they hit kindergarden than most anorexic girls in college.. Do we seriously have to start building resumes as infants? It's quite clear to me that the poor kid just wants to be tossed around between their uncles in the yard and giggle uncontrollably… Or at least, that's what I thought was fun when I was 18 months old. 

The second thing is: 2) Facebook. I know, stupid. But I'm referring to this ability to follow lives of people from my past… Specifically, this class of people who got married and stayed put in high school or college. This category of my past all have 2-3 kids, posting pics of their kids going to kindergarden where we went to kindergarden… Updates on family dramas, gatherings, anniversaries, etc… I'm assuming these people occasionally must look at my Facebook page and think how jealous they are that I got out and have done so many things, seen so much of the world… At the same time that I am looking at pictures of their families and wonder who is more satisfied with their lives.. Most seem very satisfied and happy with their lives and choices, but then again, don't we all on this perfectly manicured and edited portrayal of ourselves online? But isn't it interesting how accessible for comparison Facebook is making it, and is this changing our ability to find satisfaction? Is it increasing satisfaction to browse around and see how happy our friends and acquaintances are? Or maybe, does it make us feel happy to see how much better our own lives are compared to their's? Or does it make us wonder what our lives would be like if we had made different choices or had different (either more or less) opportunities? Perpetual dissatisfaction. I know, this isn't a new concept for discussion, but it's an interesting thought experiment… 

The truth is, I don't regret my path. I would have been very resentful, I think, if I had married my high school sweetheart and never gone off to explore or find my own way… I've changed so much, mostly for the better.. And there have always been some people who went away and some people who stayed behind. It's not new to our generation… But it seems like *something* is… Why are there so many of us? And what will become of us? It's like we're self-selecting down to an impossible standard. At this point, the list of things I require in a partner is basically unattainable.. as well as my expectations of my poor unconceived theoretical future children… Maybe I'll have to teach the poor fetus intra-womb Yoga by the time I'm pregnant? Pauvre bébé.. Hopefully, I will be long out of yuppie-ville by that time and back to reality.

It's almost like we have to make a conscious decision at some point to give up on the whole thing and make peace with what it is - at it's core - that makes us happy. And a key piece of that happiness and satisfaction that I have observed is in simplicity. For those of us blessed with too much liberation, perhaps we need to learn to self-impose the limits....Limitless choices and opportunities are making us insatiable. Those limits that seem most important, most basic, are Who Where and Why. Once we have chosen those basic simple limits, we need to learn to settle into them and grow roots. Those have been the most satisfied people I have met. I find it fascinating to compare the differences in perspectives in my geriatric patient population. Most of these old wise folks have found their way into peace, sooner or later. Like it or not, we almost all end up laying in a bed somewhere, alone a lot of the time, and reflecting on the choices we've made in our lives. In the end, will my Generation "?" end up fulfilled, unsatisfied, or alone?