The O Generation’s Herald Sings

In the Recorder today was a sad column, yet it also showed wisdom and honesty, and a sense of reality, not despair.   Joshua Freund is a local man with three jobs,  and his main point in the column was to show how resilient his generation is. He calls them the O- Generation, people who were born in the eighties, and now confront the new world where old credentials don’t mean the same as they used to.

What I liked about Josh’s column was when he spoke about ‘right livelihood.’ He and many of his contemporaries patch together jobs, cobbling together the funds to pay the bills but never enough to pay for a 401K or other savings plan. It’s hit or miss. “Perpetual debt is a reality that many of us in the O Generation are learning to cope with and even navigate in ways that allow us to invest in our lives with meaning and purpose. What once meant ‘unemployed’ now has the potential to mean that we have the time and energy to create thriving backyard gardens, and callous our hands with as many do it ourselves projects as we can manage.”

Then he hones in on what really is important to him.

“It is relationships that mean so much to us in the O Generation, because as we look out at the O-Horizon of our lives, we can see that we truly need each other to survive whatever is ahead. What is ahead? we ask ourselves?  Pensions?  Economic stability? The American Dream?  Well, none of us are really sure. The best we can do is base our efforts to what feels right in our hearts, and lucky for us, that seems to be making more sense than we could ever hope for.”