When we were ‘millennials’
I was 24 when I started working in a newspaper. My editor was another 24-year-old, a brilliant young grammar whiz who was the humblest person I’ve ever known. Even today — five companies and a couple of dozen bosses later — that record hasn’t been surpassed.
We both turn 53 this year, but graying hair and wrinkles notwithstanding, I still call her sometimes for tricky language questions, and more so for tricky life situations.
I didn’t realize it then, but our team was young. No one in the group was older than 27. In today’s lingo, we were the office “millennials,” except that back then there was no wedge between the generations. You start working in an office, everybody expects you to be an adult and you behave like one whether you’re 21 or 61.
Thrust into a kind of work that, on certain days, will tie you up until midnight only to surface back in another part of town at 8 a.m., you just give it your all, without much thinking involved. You never complain. You never leave your job either because it’s part of the fabled lore that ours is a difficult industry. It’s like the glue that welds you to the job even more.
Ours was also generation that never had an airline seat sale. We never traveled for fun, only for work. And ‘traveling’ doesn’t always mean first class seat in the flag carrier. Everybody has a story to tell: hitching a ride with a delivery truck to a disaster zone, a military helicopter ride to a rebel lair, a boat ride to a far-flung village with no electricity, a joy ride in a press car to cover an election that lasted from sunrise to another sunrise.
Perhaps, all the excitement compensate for wages so low you’d think the ‘vow of poverty’ is part of the work contract.
Back then, 50 seemed ‘astoundingly’ old. They were the revered grumpy men and women you needed to please and emulate. But in our midst was an obvious odd (wo)man out — a dashing socialite who looks 35 rather than 50, has the energy of an 18-year-old, and follows a fitness regimen worthy of a svelte figure reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn in “A Roman Holiday.”
In an office party held on the day she turned 50, the office was decorated to look like a beach, with walls adorned with big buntal hats. The table had seashells and some sand if I remember correctly. The guests came in shorts, slippers and Hawaiian polo shirts past 9 p.m. At near midnight, the groove was just starting a la Waikiki summer, drinks, music, and conversation overflowing.
Us ‘millennials’ were huddled in a corner thinking it was cool to be 50 just by looking at her and decided that that’s pretty much how we are going to grow up — enjoying life and celebrating it even at the ripe old age of 50.
Today you can only laugh at my big belly fat, my intense dislike for parties and the limelight, and my preference for low-key, almost invisible roles. My idea of aging gracefully — calm and quiet rather than loud and bold — was exactly the opposite. Perhaps, she was more ‘millennial’ than any of us combined, including today’s true millennials.
They also say that we were the last generation to be trained on traditional media work — we know deep dive storytelling, hardcore beat reporting, and copy that goes through the eye of a needle. Every time I hear this I get baffled about what really changed, because as far as I know that is still the gold standard in newsrooms across the world.
You never really notice the passing of years. You just realize one day that more than half of the people you are working with are half your age. The entry of the members of the so-called “millennial” generation into the workplace has changed entire equations and office cultures altogether, and not just in my industry.
The stereotypes abound: They can’t hold a job, they are always traveling, they splurge all they earn, they have short attention spans, and they need to be entertained all the time. But there are also good things, according to the experts. They are more educated and value experiences more than material things, they are big on learning and self improvement, and most actually frown on booze. Most have hobbies and are into health and fitness. Today’s young people are also more assertive of their needs. They crave work-life balance, mentoring, and meaning.
Our generation wanted all of those things as well but we do not have the guts to defy the world order, which, as every GenXer knows, is highly structured and demands unforgiving conformity. So between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is a wide, engulfing agony.
When I announced sometime ago that I was moving to another job for the third time in three years, I felt very embarrassed. Not that I have any reason to be ashamed of wanting to try other things. But I never job-hopped in my 20s, 30s or even 40s. At 50, my world has obviously turned upside down. I might as well try bungee jumping or sky diving.
For the record, I started a new job two weeks before the global lockdown last year amid the spread of the coronavirus, my fourth job in four years. Then the pandemic hit the world. Hard. As chaos and madness ensued, I knew I was right on spot — the right place, the right time — finally, maybe even surprisingly. But that is an entirely different story.
In the last four years that I was adrift in a sea of nearly yearly changes, I often asked myself: Am I having a second childhood?
I often hear the word ‘adulting’ all the time from my ‘adult’ kids and their friends — paying for one’s bills, clothes, shoes, hobbies and the mani-pedi are big deals worthy of an Instagram story. My fellow ‘millennials’ of a quarter century ago never had to celebrate those milestones, because we have those responsibilities on our shoulders even way before we were fully ready to take charge of our lives.
But then maybe there’s the rub. Because you have been an “adult” most of your life, you crave other conveniences later on when the circumstances are different. Or maybe as we age, we don’t have the patience anymore to put up with non-negotiables. What is the opposite of ‘adulting’? I have yet to find the most appropriate word, and I have been searching.
A few years ago, I met somebody around my age who describes himself as a “rolling stone” because he craves fluidity or the freedom to move in and out of experiences, geographies, and roles. His resume was impeccable, his experiences intoxicatingly varied. Laughably, I realized he is actually a grown up man and so am I.
Maybe, you never really grow up, you only grow older. And against the backdrop of a changing world and changing cultural and professional mores, you adapt to the change. And maybe it’s also true that ‘Millennials,’ “GenXers’ or ‘Boomers’ are really just labels because across generational differences there are also similarities such as the hankering for a life unencumbered by walls.
But because in my corner of the universe those walls are high, there isn’t much of a choice; it is often an unaffordable luxury to choose. You start on a career path and you end your career in that same road, maybe even in the same company because you need stability more than anything else. Or maybe, just maybe, you just didn’t think it is within the realm of the possible to switch lanes.
But today’s young people are defying life’s pre-set roadmaps because they are more open to experiment with more fluid identities. Perhaps it isn’t confined to their generation, because if you do the Math (at any age), you’ll come up with the realization that there isn’t actually much to lose. Even if the stakes are high, living life to the fullest will always involve some form of betting, and with it comes the consequence of losing or winning big time.
I’d say I’ve seen both sides of the coin.
