Continuing the previous Post, in what concerns people’s aspirations for an adult life, they start being “guided” by the conviction in finding personal directions to their lives. In this context, creativity and motivation start having a central role. Creativity makes room for people to have their authentic interests flourished, and motivation would encourage them to pursue their dreams and develop the necessary skills to achieve them. This change in society’s core values concerning people’s purposes in their lives, is also a result of the increase in connectivity brought by internet. Although, at this point, the internet was mostly used for reading[1], by the time Millennials were entering their adulthood, interaction on Games, on professional and on relationships’ sites, as well as on the cloud, had already had a great influence on the changes in people’s values and their self-perception, which include their judgments about the quality of their lives. As we said before[2], this generation experiences the transition from the aspiration for stability to the search for paths more connected to existential satisfaction. Questions such as: “Am I a happy at this job? Is this the life I’ve dreamed of? Is financial satisfaction enough to make me happy?”, have become more and more present in people’s decisions about their directions in life, as well as in their anxieties. This topic will be developed later. Anyhow, regardless of cultural changes and people’s motivations, real life imposes some limits in what concerns people’s freedom to choose their life tracks. Firstly, most of the time, people need to provide for themselves and their families. The necessity of making a living contributes to the development of a certain “strengthen of Ego”. I.e, contributes to building the necessary skills to cope with life, to deal with difficulties, to make choices and to deal with the consequences of their choices. Moreover, working is not just a way of earning a living and providing for families. It has always played an important role on people’s identities, since it gives them a sense of social belonging. What we might consider that has culturally changed is this basic feeling that what someone does as a job should be associated with their existential satisfaction. We are not saying that people were not happy with their professions before. But the idea that people’s jobs should be meaningful and connected with their aspirations has changed. We believe that it is also associated with people starting to quit their jobs because they were not happy and, from that time now on, they find social support to do that. And this is obviously linked to the fall of stability as a core value on people’s ideal of happiness.
In short, happiness and direction in life have always been intertwined. What’s changed from Millennials on, is the basic sense that emotional stability should be given by social stability- family and permanent job. And happiness is part of this package. It seems that the ending and restarting cycles have become more and more frequent, both in affective and professional relationships, an have been incorporated to social expectations. This change of paradigm, as in everything else in life, has had advantages and disadvantage and consequences.
To be continued [1] Estúdio-Folha. Único. Tecnologia. We have entered figital e onlife era; knows how it affects your life. May 30th 2022. (Free translation) [2] For more details see Post 6- Millennials -generation Y, In Essay 7- Cultural influences on Identity. In: www.ceciliapsicologa.org
Comentarios