How Can We Bridge The Generation Gap?

Question: Why is there a period called youth in our development?

Answer: It is in order to enter life. If the youth knew and understood how to do it correctly, they would learn first and foremost from the sages and try to explore all the impulses that youth have with the help of the adults.

Question: What should be the relationships between the youth and their parents since, on the whole, they never listen to the parents?

Answer: The problem of fathers and sons is an eternal problem that repeats every generation since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. There is nothing new here.

Today, the problem relates not only to fathers and sons, but also to mothers and daughters. In the past, men worked, went on journeys, explored new places, and invented different things while women were excluded totally from these areas and were expected to sit quietly at home and engage in housekeeping.

Therefore, in the past, this was considered a fathers and children problem, but it referred to the sons, and today it is a much greater problem and exists also between mothers and daughters.

Basically, I don’t see the relationships between parents and children as a problem since everything stems from our evolution. We are the only part in nature that evolves in such a turbulent manner from one generation to the next.

The next generation doesn’t feel that it belongs to the older generation anymore. They believe that the older generation is hopelessly old fashioned because there is such a quick change of desires, intentions, and goals.

I see it in my children and especially in my grandchildren. I don’t understand them, but I do understand and perceive the fact that I don’t understand them. They have a different attitude toward life.

So, what can we do? Both the older and the younger generations must undergo mutual education so that they could establish accurate communication between them; otherwise, they will be disconnected totally.

The younger generation demands to be given food, shelter, and clothing, and whatever they do is their own business and not their parents’. This is certainly not a solution to the situation. At the same time, the older generation cannot dictate to the younger generation what to do, and that isn’t the right solution.

There must be a continuous common aspiration for connection and mutual understanding, but mainly an aspiration for determining the right goal, the attainment of the attribute of absolute love by all of humanity, absolute mutual connection, absolute bestowal unto one another.

If the goal is right, it connects all the generations, but first we must reveal it. We first must teach the older generation so that they will understand the goal of the evolution of humanity, how it is advancing toward this goal, and how it perceives it.

If it is perceived correctly by both the older and the younger generations, all the opposition and conflict between them will disappear. The older generation will see this goal, what it can offer, and how to fulfill it in its paradigm, and the younger generation will perceive it in its paradigm. Then, these two generations will integrate into one another and mutually help one another attain it.
[165441]
From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 10/8/14