Questions And Answers

I believe that something must have happened to my generation. We seem to be looking for answers, looking for something, searching for something, yet we seem to be afraid of finding the answers. Many of my own generation, the so-called "baby boomers" are just plain old scared. We seem to have what it takes—we have talent, education, credentials, we even have the looks—if that’s what it takes. But we don’t seem to have the confidence because we’re scared. Looking for answers, but running scared. And there really isn’t any particular thing we’re afraid of.

We’re afraid of relationships. We’re afraid that we’ll never meet the right person and if we do meet him or her, we’re afraid it won’t work out.

We’re afraid we’ll never get that "good" job, and when we do get it, we’re afraid we’re going to lose it.

We’re afraid folks on the new job won’t like us and then when we get there, we’re afraid certain folks will like us.

We’re afraid of failure, and we’re afraid of success.

We’re afraid of dying young and we’re afraid of growing old.

We’re afraid of things staying the same and we’re afraid of change.

We’re afraid to take risks, we’re afraid to step out on faith, yet we’re control freaks and so we’re afraid to give up control.

We’re just plain old running scared!

And unfortunately, that inability to find the answers to our tough questions has carried over into what we often call generation “X”, a generation of young people who are very apathetic about the world and about life and feel that the world and that we have somehow let them down. They don’t want to accept that there are more questions than there are answers an attitude that many of us probably passed along, and so they are very disillusioned and very indifferent.

Moreover, because of all of our fears, we get all stressed out and burned out, and then we start wondering why—why can’t we get some answers—and when we can’t figure it out we start stressing out, and then, we start looking for ways to manage and control the stress in our lives. We try to figure everything out—we figure that there has to be an answer, a way to deal with our problems with our situations. So we start working on ourselves—we become our own project—our own self-improvement project. "Maybe the answer is in earning this degree. . . , or getting that job.., or having this relationship.., or going to this seminar. . . , or seeing this therapist . . . , buying these clothes. . . , getting this hairstyle . . . , going on this diet . . . ,stop eating pork . . . stop eating meat . . . , take more vitamins. . . , get more sleep” . . .

And sooner or later it seems like the little project and plan is not working fast enough or not working out the way we thought it would, and it’s then when we slip into the self-destructive and self sabotaging behaviors and attitudes, trying to cope with the stress of perceived failure--we drink. . . , we over eat. . . , we smoke. . . , we take drugs—(the prescription and non-prescription kinds). . . , we overspend. . . , we gamble . . ., we engage in behaviors and activities that are self defeating and self destructive. Then somewhere along the line when we finally get a clue, if we ever get a clue, that this ain’t working either, this is not the answer, we start all over again, it becomes a vicious cycle, we start working on ourselves again, on the self-improvement regimen. Eat right, exercise, take our vitamins, read more books, join a self-help group, go to church, because church is supposed to have all the answers. And so whatever we do, we think we’ve finally found the answer, but most of us really don’t stick to anything, no doubt many of us sitting right in this room have started something that we didn’t finish and we only ended up in that vicious cycle, back and forth, start and stop, trying and giving up, looking for some answers. And then we wonder why our young people are looking for answers.