A 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 in response to the newspaper article on the subject of the generation gap. The article was very intriguing and I would like to share my ideas on the matter.
I would definitely agree that there has always been generation gap since the dawn of the civilization and I assume it will not make our lives any more comfortable to know that this is normal and natural, and we should go through it. Having said that, the gap, however, is a much deeper malady than viewed superficially. Actually, it is an inevitable and maybe eternal age-versus-youth conflict between authority and rebellion, between responsibility and freedom, between limits and exuberance, between experience and naivety. This phenomenon is being characterized by children’s desire to cast off and parents’ fear to let them go.
The reasons for the irreconcilable conflicts which are so often set in motion between two set of generations are numerous. What can be said for sure is that they are divided, not by chronology, but by attitudes. It is generally observed that the mystified parents usually act like frogs in the well. They are fully convinced that their ideas and viewpoints are the ultimate and ideal. The elderly people consequently tend to think that the new generation is deriving from the older and, in their opinion, better standards and do not approve youngsters’ behavior, tastes and even ways of thinking. Their expectations are of trouble. The older generation is always bemoaning the ‘golden age’ – a wondrous period of their youth when everything was much simpler and happiness was spread among people. In stark contrast, the younger generation is flexing its muscles against the older one with a longing for independence from their parents and their history. They look with mockery on parents` ‘dark age’ being grateful for the vast opportunities their time can offer.
In conclusion, I think that as individuals, we cannot control such generation differences. We participate in them whether we wish to or not. Like it or not, we should simply admit defeat and accept the facts that the chasm between the conservatism of age and the iconoclasm of youth is all but unbridgeable.

Yours faithfully,

Suzane Karamanova