Generation Gap, Part 2

Question: Each generation is characterized by different values: some value money, others knowledge, and every subsequent generation will decreasingly appreciate the material and will increasingly seek inner values.

The gap between the generations becomes so huge that it is unclear how parents can today bring up a new generation living in a world that is completely unfamiliar to us. After all, we grew up in the old world, which perhaps has already passed into history.

Answer: This is rightly noticed. Imagine that a pair of dinosaurs gave birth to a monkey, marking the beginning of a new era that will last many thousands of years ahead. And these dinosaurs look at the monkey and do not know what to do with it. It is not even clear what to feed the monkey, how to play with it, what to talk about.

This is how we often feel today in the role of parents-dinosaurs, whose baby monkey was born a thousand times smarter than us. A child also looks at his parents and does not understand what they want from him. His parents do not understand him and they have no connection with his world. They are connected with him only financially, so he waits to be fed, given money, and left alone.

After all, he wants to realize himself in life, like every generation, meaning, to fill his desires. And these desires are not at all like those of his parents. Parents wanted to dress nicely, and the young man does not think about clothes.

Parents appreciated classical music, and the child starts itching from it, and he does not understand how it can be listened to. The entire culture of parents is so opposite to the culture of children that there is no understanding between them.

Some do not understand others and cannot understand. They meet only on the ground of food and money—as far as bodily desires are concerned. But even in the bodily desires, there are differences among us: what we eat is not the same, the concept of work, money, and career in the sense that is familiar for us, no longer exists for the younger generation.

It follows its own nature and does not want to adapt to the nature of its parents. The child thinks that since his parents gave birth to him, now they are obliged to provide for him—perhaps even until the end of life.
Parents hurried to get an occupation quickly, to start working, and to create a family. But their children do not have such thoughts and motivations; they are ready to spend their entire lives in their parents’ house, in their room, with their computer.

Question: And what do you advise parents to do in such situation?

Answer: Nothing can be done if parents and children do not reach the same depth. To do this, they need to obtain a similar level of inner development so that it becomes common to both of them, a kind of “common denominator.” And at the moment we do not have such a common denominator; it can only be in the future, depending on where the younger generation can reach in the development of the soul.

In every person there is a part that is eternal, not subject to time and does not change with years. If I, who am seventy, and my grandson, who is now ten years old, begin to work together on our soul, then we will have a common place— eternal and perfect.

It will be very important for the child; in fact, this topic is much closer to the modern generation than all the previous ones. And through it we can achieve contact, connection, mutual understanding, and support—a truly global life.

I see this in two of my children, who, like myself, are engaged in Kabbalah. Therefore, there is no misunderstanding between us because they feel that Kabbalah speaks about the meaning of life, about its purpose, and this occupation will never become obsolete.
[205724]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/18/17