About those older people regarding the youth of today

My schuldig genot is eavesdropping on conversations. Not the kind that I'm not allowed to hear, but those passing phrases from a conversation on the terrace or something your neighbors are talking about while they are also in the garden. Call me the listening version of a peeper, it just feels a bit less creepy. At least, that's the impression I have as an eavesdropper myself.

This week I was happily working under a parasol somewhere in Amsterdam. Bowl of fresh fruit on the table, cup of tea, and a view over the water. Meanwhile, I overheard the complete dismissal strategy of an employee at the table next to me. Look, that's the real juicy stuff, even though it's downright tough for the person in question. What were they going to say, how would it hurt less, what were the reasons, everything passed by. Eavesdropping on a conversation is always less painful when it’s not about you or when you don’t feel addressed. But a little later I heard in my garden the retired neighbor from two houses down going off about how dull we younger millennial people are and that we can’t handle anything. I have an opinion about you having an opinion about us, dear neighbor whom I actually shouldn’t have been eavesdropping on.

It went from ‘they're always sitting there with those earbuds in and hear nothing’ to ‘you can't hold them accountable for anything anymore’ and of course also ‘they pay those absurd prices for houses’ in about twenty seconds. It might all be true, I admit that right away, but my neighbor's generation is also not free of flaws. So that seemed to me a good starting point to talk about it.

My neighbor's generation is often a bit sour. As if they smell vinegar just a bit too often. Take that example of buying a house. He found us completely out of touch. But dear neighbor, there simply isn't a house available anymore for that soft price you once bought one for. Another sound is that we as a generation have a requirement that our work is fun and we are afraid of working hard. Dear neighbor, I am not afraid to toil until the late hours, but I refuse to do work until around your age that frustrates me. Then he had something to say about the weeds in our front yard, which I hadn't yet pulled (strange word actually, to weed), precisely because I was working. But my dear neighbor probably hadn't thought of that, because he thinks our generation doesn't work hard.

And now? Now I growl just as grumpily at my neighbor as he did at me. Own fault, thick bump. I should just stop eavesdropping.