LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Years ago, you were always reading about the so-called ‘generation gap’ and all about the conflict between the rebellious young and their mystified parents.
Well, you may not read so much about it any more, but it’s still there. Perhaps it’s just human nature that children, their parents and even their parents’ parents are poles apart. Perhaps it’s just the natural result of time passing that each generation sees the one that follows them as being in some way ‘not like we were’. Perhaps people of every generation, as they get older, look back on a ‘golden age’ that may never really have existed.
Perhaps the generations just aren’t meant to get along.

Dear editor,

I am writing with a view to extending on the topic about generation gap that you set in your last issue. I am glad you give us, the readers, this opportunity.

Truly, it’s no wonder that ‘generation gap’ has always been a buzzword in people’s life. Unconditional as it is each of us is fated to go through the hardship of sitting on the one side of the fence whilst our elderly kin in full strength is menacingly pointing their finger at us from the other side. Actually, the conflict arises in the context of adolescents’ struggle to be the masters of their lives which encounters obstacles in the face of their caring parents. This controversy continues to appear between the different generations even when the youngsters are already adults and the adults are already old people. It is just that their conceptions still differ and it seems to me that all this turns into, or more probably turns out to be, simply the natural being of humans.

That change is the engine of life is indisputable. Like a part from the indivisible, alterations occur in every aspect of life – we change our mind, tack, tune, ways... We launch a change of heart and hence we change the whole scene. This is where divergence of convictions between generations stems from. Need I say, parents equip their children for life but when these children set foot in real life in sooth, it appears that circumstances are changing and new skills are requisite. Youngsters’ fresh brains are able to apprehend them and neither are their parents’. So, the generation gap is not merely the natural result of time but also the inevitable result of social changes and development. Nothing short of familiar is the ‘golden age’ that elderly people tend to talk about for hours. It is the time when they have been young and that ‘it was so different and so much better’ is justified to be heard from their mouths for it is what they experienced and therefore all that is understandable for them. In one or another way, they just cannot take in the innovations.

In fact, every generation is right in its own premise. After all, everyone has the ownership of themselves though to sustain our mankind we need compromises because, as it appears, different generations are just not meant to fit tight.

Yours faithfully,
Nelly Urumova