What we’re missing now, we’ve been missing for a long time

Hello, my name is Ceci and I am a millennial. I know it sounds like an embarrassing confession, the reason would be that I don’t really feel like a millennial, my DOB says I am, being a mid 80s child, but my life is not really millennial-y, at least not to me.

What is indeed very millennial about me is the fact that I am from that generation that has seen both ends (or at least so far) of the technological spectrum. I can totally name all the items in those “can you remember what this is for” videos but can also keep up fairly well with modern day technology and crazy trends.

I was born in a time where there were no cellphones and no cable TV, computers were this huge contraption only used by engineers and toys were simpler and quieter.

As I grew up I went from using payphone cards, to cellphones that had that one single “snake game”, to communicating on our desktops via ICQ and later messenger, then having Nextel radio and finally the oh so coveted blackberry.

My family would take turns to use the house phone landline and we would roll the car windows up and down by hand.

Today though, my kids use facetime to call our family half around the world as if it is nothing, we watch tv shows from all over the world and stream music directly into our car without any cables.

I have seen the change and I have felt the change, as we went from closed knit societies that found novelty in items from other countries, to a global citizenship where hardly anything is undiscovered and for the right price you can have almost anything delivered to your doorstep.

I have taken part in these changes in human interaction. I used to call a friend and have her older brother answer the phone or have to wait an entire month to tell everyone what we did on vacation. Me and my friends were used to seeing the boy we liked once a week at a party or get to leave the mean girl from school behind for the entire weekend when we left school on Friday. Today’s world looks nothing like that, some 20 years later, we seem to never lose touch unless we want to, there is always a picture, a text, a post that let us know what our friends are doing without even reaching out to each other, teenagers can flirt without having to look at each other and blush, and bullies it would seem can no longer be tuned out or left behind, not even for a couple of days.

So why am I ranting or reminiscing (depends on the reader’s mood I guess) about this now. Well in part it is because I am on day number 11 of the infamous COVID-19 quarantine, with my 3 kids and my husband, losing my mind a little and my patience a lot. And as I try to keep up with their online distance learning, and maintaining them healthy and occupied, I can’t help but notice all the differences the world now has.

I am having a love-hate relationship with technology, simultaneously praising it for having iPads and Netflix and Youtube workout videos to keep us entertained, but hating it for the never ending posts about this virus that flood me with loads of information of which I don’t even know if it is true, false, old, new or at least relevant.

So back to the quarantining, it is assumed that if us human beings are the kind of species that can learn, adapt and adjust, after something as dramatic as this (sorry grandmas but for my generation being asked to stay locked at home for more than two days is quite major) things will have shifted even if it is just a little bit.

But what will this post lockdown life look like? Are we going to reset our focus and priorities? Will we be more empathic and present? Will we be less materialistic and technologically consumed? This would mean new habits and different routines. Or will we go the selfish route and become even more self-centered and paranoid, every man for himself kind of world.

As a girl who has had it all (hey I like having seen the changes of the world and still think I keep up) I can only wish that we move a little bit “backwards” so that the younger generations, including my kids, get to feel a little of what I felt. Blush when some tells you a compliment because it is to your face, keep your rifts in the physical world so at least you can then escape them and reset and move past them, or at least keep them from the entire world’s eyes.

I hope that when they come out of their “cages” they value having their teacher’s face to face answering their doubts and questions without having to wait to be unmuted in the video conference, being able to play tag actually touching your friend, holding the swing chain with your bare hands, and feeling the sun, the shade and the wind on their skin.

I guess what I hope is that after this mandatory “nap” we can actually wake up and stop taking the things that really matter for granted, because really what good is a swing if you can’t sit on it, a best friend if you can’t hug them or even a plane if you can’t get on it to discover the world freely.

I am a lover of globalization, I enjoy traveling, I like to buy products from different countries, and think isolation is not the best way forward. I believe in the richness different cultures have to offer and that collaboration is our best way forward, so it is my personal dream that all of this will leave humanity feeling hopeful and energized to work towards the greater good, to not only rally around each other in times of need and desperation, or obvious common interests, but to make of it a daily habit, to put all this energy towards improving all aspects of global interaction, be it immigration, the environment or as corny as it may sound, world peace.