Bridging the generational divide: Young people and Remembrance Day
November 12, 2009 11:00 AM
It’s not unusual for young people to have values different from older citizens. Our generation demands more rights, believes in God less, and gets married later, if at all.
We inhabit a post-materialist world that encourages us to stretch our youth for all it’s worth, one that says we don’t have to get a job now, or go to grad school now, or settle down really ever.
We are distinct from our elderly counterparts who sought life-long employment at a young age and who bore multiple children by the time they were of our undergraduate age in the contemporary era.
For most young people, we view this generational gap in a positive light, often interpreting our 21st century values as an indication of belonging to a more progressive society.
November 11, however, is an annual reminder of an alternate truth, one that underscores the need for young people to reach back and draw upon the experiences of previous generations in the hopes of pursuing a more unified and progressive way forward.
Educated in a public school system on the east coast, I recall Remembrance Day being touted by my teachers as the most solemn of holidays (if you can aptly refer to it as a holiday), and any dismissal of the valour of veterans was treated wholly as sacrilege.
Sure, we had to memorize In Flanders Fields in the fifth grade and regurgitate the chronology of events of the Second Battle of Ypres for tests in high school Canadian history, but we still never really understood the perils of war.
Despite the wealth of effort funnelled into educating my generation about the sacrifices of our foremothers and forefathers, we still really don’t get it.
Try as we might, uniting those who lived the reality of the world wars with those who came after - those who’ve never experienced vulnerability on that scale - is a tragically impossible task.
Even today, our post-materialist age insulates us from the realities of warfare.
So many, for instance, view the military causalities of the current war in Afghanistan as losses to a particular segment of the population, rather than as an affliction to the social whole.
For many of my generation, war has never been, nor will it ever be, a reality we come face-to-face with.
As part of a generation afforded more undue privilege than any other in history, Remembrance Day requires us to transcend our narrow experiences and find some degree of commonality with those directly impacted by war.
While it might be a stretch to imagine ourselves in those dire scenarios, we should feel a sense of obligation to those of generations past to rescind our comfortable 21st century realities and put ourselves in their shoes, if only for one day a year.
