THE 10-YEAR DELAYED FEEDBACK

Try as I might, I cannot imagine myself living a life similar to my father’s back when he was my age. At twenty-seven, my dad had already established himself on the fast-track of his career, and was the proud father of a 3-year-old me. Many other urbanite friends from my generation come to the same conclusion when they analyze their parents: in their 30s, they are going through the same issues in life that their parents were when they were in their 20s.

By 30, most of our parents had distinct careers or at least significant investments, and a a spouse to love, cherish, and most of all procreate with. That was the whole point back then. Get a job, get married, have babies, the whole package nicely tied up with the white picket fence of the old-guard Western Dream.

We, however, are anything but like that, and what caused this social norm to morph into a complete antithesis of itself is still debatable. 30-somethings in big cities are still living with roommates or significant others who are not fiancées or spouses yet. We are still checking out the dating scene, trying to figure out what to do with our lives, our careers. Yet we have an abundance of opportunities, more than what our parents had back in the day. Why? Well, we are exposed to a massive exchange of information, crucial and trivial. We are reachable 24/7 via email, cell phone and text. This accessibility causes confusion. While being bombarded with an endless array of news, pop culture gossip or Tweets, we are mastering the art of selective perception. We don’t have the time to process everything we see or hear, so we only chose those which we personally find helpful or interesting. And that’s where the problem lies because it is up to the individual to make a judgment of what piece of information may come in handy in the future. Individualism has gotten louder over the years and let’s face it, it ain’t always easy being an individual. We become tired. We shut off, which inadvertently delays our career, relationships, even daily progress.

On the other hand, we are much more emotionally evolved. We read signals faster once the act of communication with another individual has miraculously started, if our iPod headsets are out of our ears that is. We know if we’re being hit on, or if we stand a chance. We can tell if someone’s straight or gay or metro or bi or whatever other labels we’ve come up with so that our social structure gets more and more like a supermarket with aisles and aisles of choices. Therefore living in a big city and seeing three hundred thousand attractive choices (I meant to say “people”) a day, we don’t want to settle for anything too quickly and we take our time making the decision (and in the process turn 30).

Same goes for jobs. Our parents had fewer jobs to fish for but once they hooked a good one, they had more room to grow within the business. Nowadays jobs are more temporary and frail then ever. Thanks to the Internet, everybody can be an over-night entrepreneur. This goes back to our ever-deterring communication skills. Not being in direct interaction with people (I meant to say “choices”) and trying to receive everything coming our way in smaller and smaller formats that would make an astronaut jealous, we have started an evolution that is causing us to relive our parents’ lives with a 10-year delayed feedback.

In smaller suburban towns around the world, things are not that much different then what they were a couple of decades ago. You have just as many choices as your parents did, maybe a bit more, and your life consists of kids and a steady job by the age of 30. Could this be the reason of why people who’ve been to Bible-belt America say that traveling there is like going back in time? Could this also be the explanation of the increased divorce rates in urbanite habitats among Homo sapiens?

That being said, one main question remains: Were they happier then? I can’t make any statements for the masses, but being on two different anti-depressants and constantly dwelling on what the purpose of life is, I kinda know the answer to that question. You make up your own mind.

NEW YORK BASED WRITER Jason Mason III