To the Millenials from a Gen Xer

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19. My kids are Millennials. They both have their shit together.

My daughter somehow was BORN with her shit together. I had this conversation with her only yesterday - pointing out to her again how I just felt it in my bones that I never was going to have to worry about her too much. She's totally in command, and has been from the day she was born. My son - a different story, but as he approached adulthood (driven mostly by the reality of his increasingly happening band) he too had his shit THOROUGHLY together. Over and over from others including producers, promoters, radio people, industry people, the same words come out of their mouths about him - "he GETS it."

I felt like someone wandering in the wilderness, tilting at windmills, not really "GETTING it" for quite some time. Til late in my 20s - if even then.

Somehow I feel as though their generation set their rose-colored glasses down on the counter top a long time ago and, indeed, went out and started DOING shit. They have so much more of a sense of themselves and where they are - in the world, in their community, in time, in the whole generational thing. They're remarkable. I see it in many of their friends, too.

I feel like we Baby Boomers just screwed it all up. It's on OUR watch that the American Dream began its decline. It's OUR pollution and recklessness and that of our own elders that our Millennial sons and daughters have to clean up. And they know it. My kids grew up seeing my activism (such as it was - I certainly didn't move many mountains!!! ) and they know. They have a remarkably clear view of the job ahead.

Could be why so many in their generation recognize what's wrong in our world and know how they're going to do away with that wrong. Could be why so many of them are trending progressive. Could be why so few of them vote republi-CON - to such an extent that the statisticians and political strategists and demographics-trackers are all acutely aware of it as a reality. Could be why you're apt to hear again and again how the kids just don't get why there's intolerance against gays and other colors of skin - they just don't get it. They grew up in a world where all those skin colors and non-conventional lifestyles and outside-the-cookie-cutter feelings and ways of thinking and behaviors were THE NORM. My kids grew up knowing lots of single heads of households, gays - among their friends, peers, and parents of same, mixed-race parents with mixed-race kids, heck - sufficient numbers of followers of Islam that were so commonplace that it just wasn't anything even worth noticing.

My kids were in Catholic school. My daughter's First Communion class (2nd grade) was so diverse that only ONE THIRD of them actually made their First Communion. Catholics in her class were a distinct minority! Sure wasn't that way in MY First Communion class. Before we moved, I believe EVERYONE in class was Catholic. But after we moved, it was almost the same - until 6th grade, when we discovered that our class had exactly ONE member of the Greek Orthodox church among us. Now, WE are in the minority! And know what? That's more than okay by me!!! Seems to me that's a good thing. The Catholic Church needs to dispossess itself of the notion that it owns the world. When in reality, it's just one of many, and NOT the proverbial spoiled child who assumes it's all about THEM. And hopefully, many of us in the Baby Boom generation have recognized that same thing by now, too.

How'd that old saying go?

"...And the children shall lead."