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Should each generation be more successful than the last? And what defines success? Is it making lots of money? Moving up the career ladder? Or is it following your passion?
Whatever it is, there’s no guarantee that your kids are going to be more successful than you, even if they work harder. Millennials, for instance, might make more money than previous generations at their age, but they hold far less wealth.
And according to Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette, that may be a good thing. Successful parents, Navarrette argues, would be doing their kids a favor if they didn’t take their children’s future success for granted, and instead taught them how to be grateful for what they have.
What makes someone successful? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not being famous, or making what my teenagers call mad stacks. For me, it’s about finding your passion, something you enjoy doing from dawn till dusk. So you get really good at it, then finding a way to get paid for your time, talent and toil.
However you define it, it’s wrong to see success as an entitlement, or to assume that it will come naturally, if you go to the right college, or jump through certain hoops. It’s also wrong and foolish to buy into the idea that in America every generation will be more successful than the one before it.
Yet, even with the roller coasters of recessions and global pandemics, a lot of Americans still think that their kids are destined to do better than they did. What? Who promised that? Where’s that written down?
Sometimes it will work out that way. Sure. Each generation will move the ball further downfield, but not always. Life doesn’t come with guarantees. And when it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean as some suggest that a bargain has been broken.
There was no bargain, only an assumption. There’s a big difference. Nor does it mean as some insist that America is glitching — that it isn’t functioning as it should, and that someone is to blame.
The whole thing is just one big misunderstanding. We think something ought to be true. We want it to be true. So we assume it is true. And when this something turns out not to be true, because it was never true in the first place, we get ticked off as if we’ve been misled or tricked or lied to. Not so, none of that’s happening.
