Our Parents Saved Money. We Save Time. Our Kids Spend Attention.

It fascinates me to no end how different generations can live in the same family and yet inhabit completely different worlds.

My parents are now 78 and 75.

They still worry about whether the kids have eaten, whether we paid the help something extra, whether a light has been left on unnecessarily.

They will still try to get a mixer repaired instead of buying a new one, even when the time spent doing that is probably worth far more than the mixer itself.

But that is the world they came from.

The World They Came From

A survival, middle-class world where saving mattered. Waste was almost a moral failure. Sending your children to good institutions was perhaps one of the biggest measures of success.

They would proudly talk about their children's academic achievements because education was the path to changing the family's future.

Stuck in the Middle

Then comes our generation.

We are trying to make it big. Somewhere after 20-30 years of not thinking about it, we have learnt to value time.

But our values are still deeply middle class.

Studies matter. Hard work matters. Doing the right thing matters. There are certain red lines you simply don't cross. Respecting elders was one of them.

We have money and opportunity today, but many of the scarcity beliefs we grew up with are still very much inside us.

And sometimes I feel our generation is stuck in the middle.

Trying to explain our parents to our children.

Trying to explain our children to our parents.

And somehow not completely belonging to either world anymore.

The Generation of Abundance

Then comes the third generation.

They have grown up with something neither generation before them really had: abundance.

Abundance of information. Career choices. Travel. Technology. Money. Exposure.

But abundance comes with its own problem.

Distraction.

And that is what I find fascinating.

Perhaps succeeding today is easier in terms of opportunity, but harder in terms of focus.

There are so many paths available.

And yet everyone around you is distracted.

If you can focus deeply, work hard and stay with something for sustained periods of time, you already have an enormous advantage.

What We Inherit

Every generation inherits something from the previous one.

My parents inherited scarcity.

We inherited aspiration.

Our children have inherited abundance.

Maybe their challenge will be learning what to do with it.