Being present in the moment

The Stoic teaching about being in the present moment is as old as the hills. It encourages us to check into the present moment since it is our only interface with the real world.

However, we can also apply this principle to another challenge, namely getting along with younger people. This is also an age-old predicament. Since the dawn of humankind, the older generations have tended to criticize the younger ones. Interestingly, the list of complaints seldom changes. Younger generations are consistently labeled as "lazy," "entitled," "self-absorbed," "disrespectful," and so on. Conversely, young people are always striving to distinguish themselves from the elders. They create their own language, contexts, memes, and more. This dynamic can make communication difficult. Is there anything we can do about this?

We treat early experiences as the norm

A curious aspect of the human psyche is that we readily absorb the circumstances of our early life and assume them to be the universal norm. We get to believe that what the world was like when we were teenagers or in our early twenties is "normal" and "natural”. This perception shapes the world we understand best and enjoy most. Nothing unusual about that – just a fact of life.

Yet things constantly change

Yet another fact of human life is that it constantly, incessantly changes. This is even truer today than it was in the times of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. Back in the day, the life of a great-grandfather might not have been very different from the life of a great-grandson.

Today, however, the wind of change blows a hundred times stronger. The pace of development is breathtaking and mindboggling. Within the span of a single lifetime, we've gone from the first powered flight to landing on the moon. We've also transitioned within just one generation from the Internet being a curiosity for tech enthusiasts to a ubiquitous necessity. The 2020s have brought even more rapid changes, with the introduction of AI, the pandemic, and a new war in Europe.

This intensifies the generational conflict. Each generation tends to perceive its own technological and political setting as the "natural" one, but in the fast-changing world these perspectives fail to overlap.

The world we knew then and the world of today

Having turned forty this spring, I see this clearly. Just like everyone else, I acknowledge the state of the world when I was about 20 as the natural one. Of course, I’m always curious and I strive to keep upto- date with all the new advancements and updates. I believe I’m quite well acquainted with them and not out of touch.

However, at the same time I realize that I perceive these new developments as additions or “new layers” added onto reality. Even though I understand them and can navigate them effectively, they still feel "new”. They are variations and modifications of the "base level", i.e., the world as I knew it when I was young.

The puzzle, of course, is that younger people don't share this perspective. The state of affairs from 20 years ago is irrelevant for them. No matter how openminded I try to be, or how much I try to learn about new technologies and cultural contexts, they will never feel native to me.

The only thing I can do is to attempt to artificially “factor in” the world's new agendas and advancements into my “old” worldview. This works well for now, yet such calculations have limits. If I rely solely on this, I will inevitably be labeled a "boomer".

It’s always today

To overcome this, we must reverse our thinking. Let's consider for once that it's always today, i.e., that the only natural state of the world is the one we observe in the present moment. This perspective puts us on an equal footing with younger individuals, our contemporaries, and virtually everyone else.

The age difference can be removed from the equation and the only question that truly matters now is what we bring to the table. We no longer have to adjust our worldview or artificially recalculate conditions we are not native to. Instead, all our past experiences and the training we've received become the wisdom we carry into the present moment. And the only valid question is to what use we can put it?

Dr. Piotr Stankiewicz, Ph.D., is a writer and philosopher, and promoter of reformed Stoicism. He authored Manual of Reformed Stoicism, and Does Happiness Write Blank Pages?

---