A GenY’s Rebuttal to New York Times Article: “It’s Not About You”

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“But, of course, doing your job well often means suppressing yourself.” ~ David Brooks

 
As I read David Brooks recent Op-Ed article aimed at giving college graduates a reality check called It’s Not About You, a piece of my GenY-ness died inside (and not in a good way).

But first, let me express that I do believe Mr. Brooks makes some excellent points in his reality-check-slap to the face. Life after college is definitely not going to be brag-to-all-your-friends, six figure, tickle-fest like many recent graduates believe. As I write about in my up-coming book Are You My Life: Searching for Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!, I graduated six years ago completely assured that the red carpet would precede all my steps.

Starbucks Egg - Are You My Life?

I remember secretly wondering what was wrong with all those twentysomethings who were waiting tables or working boring cubicle jobs.  Come on, how hard could it be? I thought the only problem after college would be picking which amazing job offer I took, like five popular girls all asking me to go to prom.

Unfortunately, just like in high school, they all lost my number.

However, at the heart of Brook’s piece is an underlying generational debate going on regarding who GenY is and who the older generation thinks GenY should be. So let me be so brash at 27 years young (isn’t that so GenY of me!) to rebuff Mr. Brooks as I take the GenY side.
 

THE GREAT DEBATE

The reason I shuttered, gagged, and had to take a hot shower after reading Brooks lambaste against following your dreams, passions, and choosing the path of self-suppression is that I believe GenY, daresay possibly more than any other previous generation (every generation loves making these kinds of claims), has the ability, desire, drive, and resources to create like no other generation before. Businesses, websites, marketing plans, paintings, movies, books, brochures, cures, organizational strategies – you name it. Each medium different, but each desire the same: GenY yearns to bring to life something that did not yet exist.
 

GENY’s DEEPEST DESIRE

GenY’s / Millennials desire from the depths of their Macs to create. Call it youthful naivety, but more than money, prestige, titles, promotions, corner offices, or pension plans, GenY’s deepest desire is to be a integral part in something bigger than themselves, therefore calling upon themselves to be bigger.

Not a suppression of self, but an understanding, expression, and expansion of self to be a vital, creative, and necessary part of the bigger whole.

And honestly, what is wrong with that? Sure GenY has to become better at fitting the desire to create within the realities of deadlines and responsibility (a four letter word for some of us, we’ll admit!). But any parent, spouse, or boss who does not recognize and stoke this creative desire in GenY and instead tries to dose it with rigid rules, politics, and policies will extinguish the most imaginative and productive part of the GenY that they are desperately counting on to produce.

Like pulling the roots from a flower and then wondering the next day why it has withered and died, encouraging GenY to suppress self will only lead to suffocation.

Yes I understand fully that in organizations you have to play the game sometimes, keep your head low, say yes when you want to say no, and bite your tongue during those times you want to rip out your bosses. GenY’s cannot always be revealing themselves fully within their office setting like some errant streaker. But is the suppression of self, dreams, and passions really the best way to stay clothed?
 

DEATH OF SELF

Because when does the self-suppression start and when does it stop? When do we start asking the questions of self and when do we start asking questions about what we really want to do with our lives? Self-suppression can be a slippery slope that possibly leads us straight into our mid-life crisis around age 48 (as many of us watched our parents!) when we realize 20 years too late that we let the job, the title, the task, choose our life instead of us choosing the task, and therefore us choosing our lives.

I’ll take my quarter-life crisis now if it means avoiding it later — when three kids, a mortgage, and wife are my slightly higher stake.

So yes, call me a youthful idealist but I do believe the sweet spot is when “your deep gladness and the world’s hunger meets” ~ Fredrick Buechner. Sure this nexus point is not an easy one to obtain, but I believe it is a goal worth pursuing.

Or as Parker Palmer writes:

“Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given to me at birth by God…Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood.” Let Your Life Speak
 

CREATIVE EXPRESSION OF SELF IS AN ECONOMIC NECESSITY

If the lines of scholars and philosophers like Parker Palmer and Fredrick Buechner doesn’t do it for you, lets bring in Thomas Friedman from The World is Flat. As I elaborated further upon in my video review of The World is Flat, the desire to create, to dream, to live and breathe your passion is not just pie-in-the-sky youthful dreaming. No, Friedman writes that creativity and passion are now an economic necessity to survive and thrive in this world. As Thomas Friedman writes:

On such a flat earth, the most important attribute you can have is creative imagination” ~ Thomas Friedman

If we allow the suppression of self to be the mantra towards GenY, the only thing we as a nation will suppress is success.

_____

Thoughts?
 

7 Comments

  1. Mike

    Great rebuttal, brotha. There is certainly a need for teachability, humility, and roll-up-our-sleeves work ethic that our generation (including ME) must accept – in that, I think Brooks got it right. We want to create (to which I say “yes, go, hooray, and absolutely do it”), AND we want it to be easy and happen on our terms (to which I say, “crap… this isn’t working”).

    Somehow, we must hold both truths (with all their tension) and never compromise either one: we must be willing to die to ourselves (with all the serving, the dirty work, the early mornings and late nights and even some butt-kissing), and we must never lose sight of the “imago dei” that, by virtue of redemption, is waiting to be revealed in a thousand new ways.

    Reply
    • Paul

      Thank you Mike for sharing your humble GenY wisdom! I couldn’t agree more that the twentysomethings who are going to flourish and succeed are the ones who are going to be able to live, breathe, and work within that tension that you so succinctly described.

      Humility, perseverance, and the ability to “fail well” are three core characteristics that I KNOW I need to grow into more and more…

      Reply
  2. Marci

    Amazing Paul! If I have learned anything in my almost 29 years, it is that 1) failure need not be fatal and 2) life has a way of not turning out like we planned.

    So, what do we do with that? Well, create. Create new plans, new dreams, new vision….and remember the lyrics to the song The Good Left Undone by (yes:) Rage Against. When you have that GenY creativity in your hands it is rare, energizing, and life giving. Do we want it dried up and ordinary? Because once it is, can it be replanted?

    “Inside my hands these petals browned, Dried up, fallen to the ground. But it was already too late now. I pushed my fingers through the earth, Returned this flower to the dirt, So it could live”.

    Reply
    • Paul

      Marci – “Do we want it dried up and ordinary? Because once it is, can it be replanted?” Wow!

      Next time I’m thinking about writing an article can I just call you first so that you can take the idea, water it, and let it blossom.

      So many good points…

      Reply
  3. Kerry

    I liked your rebuttal, then I went and read his article, and actually really liked what he had to say as well! So how to reconcile both. I agree with the other replies too.. And I LOVE The World is Flat. One of the things I really learned from that book is that we have to be willing to learn new skills, trades, expand our abilities and try new things as the world changes and job markets open and close. I may be totally passionate about typewriter design, but nobody’s buying typewriters anymore. I don’t think that Brooks is saying that I should quash my passion for typewriters and live a dull life in a job I hate and accept it, I think he’s pointing out that instead of preaching the fantasy of immediate success to college grads, we should prepare people to be resourceful, curious, flexible, and willing to allow dreams and aspirations to evolve alongside the realities of the world and markets in which we live.
    As a former teacher, I do think that our culture is obsessed with showering our kids with success and “winning,” while failing to teach that reality isn’t as nice, and mommy won’t be able to call your boss and demand a raise like she harassed your college registrar about your grades and graduation status.
    Are we creative? Absolutely, and I think we need to do exactly as you said- take a good hard look at what we can do and are passionate about, and meet the world’s hunger- just like Brooks said that vocation often comes from seeing a problem and thinking, hey I may be able to do something about that. I do think there is hope, in that God did not create us with skills and passions that aren’t applicable. But sometimes we have to be willing to walk away from the typewriter idea in order to discover something new that we hadn’t even thought of before. Like shake-weights (kidding!) Something cool.

    Reply
  4. Karina

    In case I didn’t get around to posting a well rounded comment (I have yet to read the NYT opinion piece), I wanted to say that I really enjoyed this post.

    I don’t believe that suppressing ourselves will get us to do our jobs better, rather it will stagnate us personally and professionally in the longrun.

    From what I learned these past 2 years in the ‘real world’ is that you may not end up where you want but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to get there. Search for employment that will lead to your independence, learn from even the crappiest of jobs and situations and remain open for opportunity. Once I got past the frustration of ‘not being there yet,’ I was able to enjoy the details that make my life worth being there and use my creative skills to make the mundane tasks bearable.

    Maybe once we totally own this world, we will continue to add more spice to it; I’d like to think Gen Y’s potential could really turn things around.

    Reply
    • admin

      “what I learned these past 2 years in the ‘real world’ is that you may not end up where you want but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to get there..” Love that line Karina! ‘Not being there yet’ is a definite running theme for most our 20’s. If we learn to be at peace with that fact, the small will be wrought with such meaning.

      Reply

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