I've also worked with teenagers for 20 years and while its fun and rewarding, it can easily make you feel even older. The vocabulary, styles and humor are constantly changing so just when you think you are tracking, something changes again and you are once again reminded that YOU ARE OLD!
You can all but feel like an idiot when the latest social media outlet or popular device updates and now that program you use every day is unknowable and you have to relearn it, and once again you feel dumb or old, when you know you are neither one of those things.
Your 40's aren't old!!!! They are enough experience to have learned from some mistakes and able to walk in wise directions and you still have half or more of your life left! That is something to celebrate. Technology advances and constant changes mean, if you are in your 40's you've seen more change than the generation above you and you've be able to adapt to an ever-changing world coming on your heels.
Ellen Degeneres, on her show, Ellen, has done a few segments highlighting the Baby Boomer/Millennial gap. Let me tell you it has been HILARIOUS! Take a minute to watch them, then come back and finish reading, because not only did it make me laugh, it gave me a thought that answers the question in the title of this post.
The first one I saw from about a month ago, introduced old technology or items we used pre-technology and challenged a millennial to use them. Then Ellen did it again in this episode.
Weren't those great?! I am not a Baby Boomer. As someone who is born in 1978, I am Generation X, sometimes called Xennial, as a micro generation for someone in between the Generation X and Millenial. So I don't fit either of the generations highlighted in Ellen's show segment, but as I watched the video, my first thought was, every Millennial (1980 - 1995) and even Gen Z (1996-2009) should watch this and more importantly do this challenge with some older technology so that they come to understand that older people aren't stupid, its just not what they know.
Because if you watch the videos above the high school and college student look like idiots and its because they don't know what they are doing, its not because they are actual idiots. In fact, both demonstrate with personal facts about themselves, that they are in fact, smart.
So what does all this have to do with 40 year olds being awesome? I will tell you. I alluded to this in the beginning, but we are the best lifeline to both generations. We remember what it was like to use a rotary phone and be tethered to a phone cord as we talked with friends on the phone. We remember life before caller id and before voice mail. We lived before the internet or cell phones were a thing and that means we understand how to tell time on an analogue clock and how to read a map. We knew what is was like to get up to turn the tv channel as a kid and make sure you were there to watch that show you loved because it wasn't getting taped, but we also have migrated with the times. We've gone from cassette tapes to CD's to MP3 players to smart phones with streaming services and digital downloads. We had a myspace account and know what "You've Got Mail" is talking about. You may not have a Snapchat account, but you know what it is. We are the timeline and that is beautiful!
We are the past and the future in one and I think that might make us the smartest people on the planet :). When this world has you feeling old, just remember you know how to do so many things and you are up to continue on the learning journey. We will have fun as we get most of the jokes along the way too! Happy Wednesday! Christmas is next week, so I will be sharing back on here in two weeks. Enjoy your Christmas and if you don't have a lot of people to celebrate with, look out for others in the same boat and make it more fun for all!
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