Who Invited the Old People?

I’m not sure when it happened, because certainly no one cleared it with me, but my generation---my flannel wearing, grunge loving, Pearl Jam concert going, COOL generation are now…the old people?? A quick glance around Facebook, the grocery store at 11:30 PM, or a PTA meeting, and I realize the mid thirty to forty crowd are not my parent’s friends like they SHOULD be.

What the heck universe?

We are now somehow the people hauling our kids to sports in the mini vans, while defending our radio channel selections to the eye rolling passengers in the car.

On some levels, this newly revealed truth is disturbing. (Mainly because I have maintained the notion from youth that if I was cool, my parents must be lame.)  

But I am oddly at peace with it. Dare I say…I actually like it?

 I like that I’m at stage in my life where the world is bigger. It is surely a relief that life does not in fact revolve around what classes I’m in, if the cute boy I liked gave me the time of day, whether or not I can go to the football game or my social standing with 16 year olds.

Sure I pay bills now, raise kids, complain about gas prices, own life insurance and actually understand what “diversify my portfolio” means. I'm comfortable in my own skin and that is worth it's weight in gold. 

Since the world is indeed bigger than the walls of my high school or the 3-mile radius between home and my afterschool job, life is now an endless beautiful display of raw opportunities. The little things that I thought would always matter are crushed under the weight of the understanding that in fact: Nobody cares.

The things that felt big (and were big) at the time are actually small compared to that moment when your soul mate asks you to marry them. The first time your baby is laid across your chest, or grabs your finger in their small palm as tight as they can. When you are handed keys to your first home, or that first ER trip for stitches when you realize the doctor is asking you to make the decisions, and not some adult behind you.

Suddenly Kevin Costner’s “build it and they will come” is no longer just the things of movies, but an actual life plan. As big as you can dream it, you can make it happen. Adulthood has its hard realities and responsibilities, but oh how I’m content with the trade off of power naps and pants with elastic in them.

So. High school graduates of the 90’s, look at the world around us. We are the big people now, and we are the big people of a world that is largely different than that of our parents. We cannot be content in the thick of thin things. We can’t hold on to dated ridiculous notions that we care what people think. We have children and homes and jobs. Our kids go to schools that we fund with our tax dollars.  Our take home pay is what feeds our families and fuels our daily lives. America has been changing and it is our generation that must care and want to do something about it. We can’t sit around like the perpetual teenager, waiting for someone older and more responsible to take care of things or clean up the messes. 

We’re it! We are the older responsible people now and we have to rise to it.

Please stop with the:

I don’t want to offend anyone…

I don’t want to annoy people with my political posts…

No one wants to hear what I think…

What I do or say doesn’t matter…

I don’t think that really concerns me..

Who on earth cares what people think? Didn’t we pack that way of thinking up with our yearbooks and Nirvana CD’s?

What about the issues facing our nation today? What about the ever-increasing erosion of our Constitution? What about the subtle and not so subtle attacks tearing at the fabric of families? What about those in power who are supposed to work for us, hiding information and working their own agenda? And to what end? What about the cost of gas right now? What about our relations with other nations, and the upheaval that is happening all around us?

You mean to tell me we care about me “checking in” at a fun trendy restaurant, but don’t bog you down with the future of the nation we live in??
US consulates are burning all around the country, but I won’t annoy you with that. Let me tell you what my latest score in Bejeweled was.

We are allowed to care about the big things. We SHOULD care about the big things. We should TALK about the big things.

I enjoy a good day about the small things as much as the next person. Life is sweet that way. But our life needs to be a full and rich tapestry of all those things that touch us and the lives of our loved ones. We need to embrace our stage in life and fight for the things that truly matter. We don’t have to always agree, we don’t even have to take life too seriously, we just have to always, always care.