I am a ‘Baby Boomer’ who grew up in the Sixties and, like every generation before or since, we were incessantly put down by our parents’ generation for being lazy, scruffy, entitled, irresponsible ‘beetles’. What do beetles have to do with anything, I hear you ask. Some moronic middle-aged person became aware of the Beatles and did a literal and wrong translation of the word beetle, the common insect of the Coleoptera order, and came up with the word ‘Khanafess’, which was used thereafter to label my generation. The moniker stuck for many years until my generation became more influential in the Seventies and we just referred to them by their proper name “The Beatles”, without attempting to transliterate it. The comparison with the Beatles was a pejorative comparison because we dared to grow our hair slightly longer than the more common short back and sides.

What my generation was experiencing was full-on resentment from the previous generation who suffered the horrors of World War II, and the aftermath of post-war traumas, rebuilding broken societies, and large-scale shortage of everything. Whilst we were not responsible for the war, nor did we suffer its consequences, we nevertheless benefited from its outcome and the relative peace that came thereafter. In my personal case, we also post-experienced the Palestinian diaspora which came soon after the end of WWII so, we were made to feel even more guilty for showing any signs of enjoying life, appearing to be wasteful, flippant, decadent, or assuming any attitude other than being obedient, diffident, grateful and highly disciplined; traits that teenagers don’t demonstrate well or often.

Since then, the Baby Boomers have gone on to compose beautiful music, produce brilliant movies, write hundreds of literary books, paint amazing pictures, cure many types of cancer, identify and treat AIDS, bring computing to every home, and accomplish many, many more amazing feats. But, they also did unspeakable things like murder, genocide, robberies and started wars pretty much all over the world.

Roll forward through the Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, Noughties, up to today and nothing seems to have changed. We still look at the young amongst us and all we see is lazy, scruffy, entitled, irresponsible millennials; except we added new terms like ‘snowflakes’ to the mix, just to make sure we really completely knock self-confidence out of them.

Yet, each generation, whilst it has its fair share of under-achievers, criminals, and wasters, they still manage to out-perform the previous generation in creativity, inventiveness, scientific endeavour and enhanced sense of responsibility for the environment and the eco-system.

Why? Why do we keep knocking down the on-coming generation? Why do we denigrate their views and ambitions? Why do we delight in telling them they will amount to nothing? Why do we fill column-inches in papers labelling them with derogatory terms and prophecy doom and gloom for them? When does the inflexion point appear as we stop thinking they are clever and cute little ones and start seeing them as the devil’s children? Why do we enjoy asserting how hard and smart we worked to give them what they have but, don’t deserve? Why the hell are we so bitter and twisted? Didn’t we complain about our parents lack of empathy and understanding? Didn’t we do better than them? Didn’t we, in spite of their criticism, look after them in their old-age? Have we learnt only to repeat and perpetuate their mistakes?

Or is there something else going on here? Is this to do with the Alpha-male / Alpha-female desire to dominate as in many animal groupings? Are we afraid of loss of power, authority, and control? Are we afraid of becoming irrelevant and resented by our future carers for the burden we place on them? Or maybe we are jealous that they are showing us there is a better way of living than the life we designed for ourselves? In short, are we jealous of our children for what they potentially can accomplish?

Here is another myth to debunk: things did not used to be better than they are these days; food did not taste better; people were not less violent; husbands and wives did not spend more time talking to each other; neighbourhoods were not friendlier; and people did not care for each other more. Many crimes were committed and perpetrators hardly ever got caught; children were abused; tobacco was smoked by adults at an industrial scale, thus poisoning non-smokers; women were raped and blamed for ‘asking for it’; the list is endless. If you think things used to be better, just open any history book you like and see the pointless wars waged; go through old newspapers, and read the harrowing stories of everyday lives, including polluted rivers, smog, racial discrimination, and much more; and while you are at it, checkout your own old photographs and see how smartly dressed you were.

If you were born before 1980 and you are fast approaching your mid-life, as you see the young millennials ‘doing it all wrong’, just remember this: the person you are knocking down maybe the future tolerant and sympathetic young woman at the end of the phone who helps you fill out your medical insurance form; he could be the policeman who comes to your rescue in your hour of need; he maybe the ambulance-man who drives you fast to the hospital after your heart attack; or she may be the cardiologist that extends your life for a few more years so you can have another chance at criticizing them. If I were you, I would go around thanking Millennials in advance.

Here is the shortest story I know: A young man and his grandfather were walking along the ocean shore when he turned to his companion and said: ‘Grandpa, look how magnificent the ocean is’, the Oldman smiled wryly and replied: ‘Ah, but you should have seen it in my days, it was more magnificent’.