Among the many fascinating things about generational archetypes is how the pieces add up and work together.
Nomads, today’s Xers, who experience the nadir of a nation’s childhood protections in an era run amok with self-indulgent adults, learn as children to survive. They have to as no one else is watching out for them. They learn to find their rag-tag packs in childhood in which they find a modicum of protection and a degree of connection. And they learn to read adults’ intentions and often know them better than they know themselves, creeping many adults out with their eery and unnatural “proto-adult” nature.
In young adulthood, Xers enter a work environment favoring older workers for whom a full-time job, robust benefits and generous retirement plans are a given. A new age-based, two-tier corporate climate offers them little training, makes them no promises, and engages them mostly with gigs lacking benefits or job security. So they learn to find their own way, make their own path, to do without and to figure things out.
In midlife, at the time of peak earning potential (and where they are now), the nation goes into a Crisis, and they now are the ones responsible for managing and directing most of the nation’s institutions and functions … during a crisis era, little of which is of their making. Stretched, frenetic, juggling family, life, income and community, they do what they always do: suck it up and get things done.
All that kicked-to-the-curb treatment they got as children and young adults was the grist upon which they grew to become capable, pragmatic leaders able to do what needs doing for the clan (family, community, nation) to survive, even at their own expense.
The most under-protected generation as children, they become the fiercest parents and community leaders in midlife. And as elders, they are the kindest and most giving of all the generational archetypes, wanting to make sure another generation of children never experiences the challenges they did.
But, as elder Nomads die out, another one begins to be born … and the cycle continues on.
