Our parents deserve better

“My parents are conservative. They want us to compete all the time. They don’t understand our desires to do what we want. They don’t give us time to figure out what’s happening in life.”

Seems like a common thing most of us would say.

How can an entire generation think more or less the same thing?

Understanding our pasts might help us appreciate the present. So let’s go back a century.

Past, early 20th century

Our grandparents are just being born. It’s perfectly fine for our great-grand dads to have multiple wives if they can afford it. They usually give birth to a dozen kids.

They did that, not because they were erotically charged. They did that to ensure the safety of their genes, because the mortality rate in India during the 1920s was about 350 (meaning 350 kids out of 1000 die before reaching the age of 5).

That’s 1 in 3. Dead. Before the age of 5.

So giving birth to a dozen kids, ensured at-least 3 of them reached adulthood.

Our grandparents aged, got married and started procreating in good time. Little did they know of the progress the West had made in Medical Sciences. The mortality rate had started reducing at a steep rate. The kids were born into a healthier world and no longer was there a need to worry about a newborn’s life.

Our grandparents soon realized most of their kids were going to reach adulthood. They quickly forsook the need to give birth to more kids. But not quick enough. They ended up having to divide their resources to more like 9 adolescents, not 3.

And this is what our parents were born into.

Into a world which wasn’t ready for a population explosion. Into a world where you follow rules diligently to survive. Shortage was the norm then. Our parents had to compete to get education, food, clothes, jobs and sadly, the love and attention from their own parents.

Our parents became the stabilizing agents of our society. They had to work harder because they started from nothing. Yet, they managed to do more than survive. They improved their family standards, made their lives infinitely more comfortable and gave us the opportunity to live their dreams; simultaneously building the world we see today.

The torch was passed to them at a time when plague and famine were constants in human life. Our parents were amazing, and did their bit to further improve human progress.

Present, early 21st century

Times have changed. No longer are we fighting against famine. Now we are more at risk of obesity than starvation. When caught in a pandemic, majority of us are able to quarantine ourselves without having to worry about food. The mortality rate has gone down, the literacy rate is on the rise. We are expected to live longer and healthier lives than ever. There hasn’t been a better time for a human to be alive.

We personally want to do more than survive too. We want to experience pleasure. We want to travel the world and share our experiences to our friends. We want to take risks, do audacious things, help others and have fun. We are even privileged enough to think about life and it’s meaning during a crisis such as this.

Yet, we care about social esteem more than ever. We complain constantly how fucked our world is. We cannot handle constructive criticisms and spread hatred. We have forgotten to appreciate the hard work of thousands of generations of humans.

This is neither the time for self-pity or hatred nor the time to complain.

This is the time to grab hold of the torch of human consciousness and do our bit to make the world a better place, not only to us, but to all living beings.

This is the time to marvel at how far the human species have come; be optimistic and work towards a brighter future.

This is the time to appreciate our parents’ work and ensure they enjoy their lives, because they clearly deserve it.

Inspired by Factfulness by Hans Rosling