The Peter Pan Generation.

During an late night insomnia fuelled talk with a friend, who recently migrated to L.A., he accused yours truly of being immature, and the poster child of the "Peter Pan Generation". Since he moved to L.A. he has been afflicted by need to act like he just saved the world from a meteor with Aerosmith screaming a ballad in the background, and have spent a lot of time on Wikipedia.  After finding out why Generation Y( people born from late 70's to the 80's) were called "The Peter Pan generation" I realised that what my friend meant wasn't a compliment.

This is what Wikipedia says

"This generation is also sometimes referred to as the Boomerang Generation or Peter Pan Generation, because of the members' perceived penchant for delaying some rites of passage into adulthood, longer periods than most generations before them. ................. "

After more google research I found the label "Peter Pan generation" is used always in a derogatory sense than a compliment. ('THEY' even figured out to make Peter Pan look bad) . So as a member of this generation, I take it upon myself to re-cool-ify Peter Pan and shine some light on how cool we are. This is only meant to the real Peter pan generation. Not for those, like my friend , who decided that getting a well paying job away in the so called greatest cities, away from his friends and folks, getting a pretty lady for wife, means maturity and seriousness and decided to not to be a part of Generation Y. Dude! We did more awesome stuff when we were kids. If there is anything good in this world still remaining its because we carried it along. I will elaborate.

Most of us are the product of the post WW babies. The people that was born when our world was rebuilding itself. Our parents might have had a tough child hood, but they did pamper us, as much as possible, and still do. We were bought up by parents who struggle to raise their lively hood and burning blood and time to build the ideal life and bring up their children. We grew in a times of great cultural and global change, and acceptance. My batch in school was called the " Millennium batch". YES!! we passed out school in 2000. It s pretty cool thing if you think about it.We were there alive and kicking as any adolescent would have when the century changed.We never were too traditional, and we are not too modern, even as the century turned in the digital era.

Its is disheartening to see that my generation is seen in poor light. To be frank what ever light you non generation Y people see us, is because you put us there. We never complained, until all the errors of the previous generations fell on us. The greatest crisis we ever faced was probably the Global recession. It was the decisions of our elder generations that put us in a rut.But who cares about that, the impending economic meltdown, climate disasters, and gods knows what will change that. Before Generation Y gets a bad rap for that, let me point out, we just did what we were told to do. There weren't many paths for us to take You created this world for us. And know we decided this world sucks.

We were bought up idolising heroes of history and legend. Heroes during our time never existed.What ever idealistic values where instilled in us, every real word hero, every great 'ism' created by you and propagated though us has failed, has turned villains. Didn't we follow all the rules, u laid down to us when we grew up. The great heroes of the Great wars, have turned villains. Religion and the institutions of Gods have become sinners, Medicine has become the biggest profit making business, Science has lost its respect and trust.

We have only seen the greatness of these institutions in history books, and movies and stories. The real world all the other generations created for us was never like the world they portrayed it to be. Remember this was the world given to us, a world where growing up and being successful meant, a large amount of social neglect, selfishness, douche-baggery, back stabbing, betrayals and good old fashion evil. It may be coincidence that some of Generation Y started asking why?

Unlike prior generations, we weren't the rebellious ones, we never rebelled against parents or authority figures. We enjoyed the same music and movies as our parents. We read book which they considered classics, enjoyed and still cherish them. Unlike the latest generation, we listen to music that had more words that sirens and grunts. The songs we sung as kids had more meaning and lyrical value than the billboards tops of today. We are the ones who decided personal music players( the legend of the WALKMAN) was much cooler than the boom boxes of yesterdays, or the screeching pain in the neck mobile phone speakers. We know an audio cassette works both sides, and how to do a long play record on VHS. We have high scores in both Pac-man and Angry birds.We were there when video games was bouncing pixels off lines, to having water cooled GPUs to play Crysis. We know how to use cell phones that has 'sms' as the hottest new feature to new shiny touchy touchy smart phones. We went to barber shops to get our hair cut, not to unisex beauty saloons to have our hair styled. Our action heroes were tough, gritty commandos, underdog boxers or cops, or spies that really knew how to kick ass, unlike the skeletal six packed vampires that go bling-bling in sunlight. Our action heroes are old men now, but they still can come back and kick as at the box office. If u have have a problem with that go talk to Stallone and the gang.

Now lets talk about the Internet. Yeah you may have created it, and the new generation has taken it has their own. But we are the ones that made it what it is. We took a military invention and made it the greatest tool for mankind. We birthed the information age. Can you imagine the current young punks using the ancient BBS as the first facebooks and waiting for an image to download on the now ancient dial-up connections. We built the Internet to what it is now. So these young little punks now can flash how connected they are with their tiny tweets and likes. It was us who embraced P2P and open source. We were the original pursuers of Internet conspiracy theories and revolutions( X-Phile, anyone?).The Internet was our rebellion. We created content and shared it with the world. It was they who decided to put a price tag on it to make the most money out of it. Not us, so we turned into modern day pirates. Maybe not swashbuckling and charming as our ancient sea faring legends, but cool enough to rock the world from our little dark, dingy, poster filled rooms.

Yeah! we refuse to be like our previous generations. We might not have the same drive as our parents to work our asses off for our kids to be happy in a miserable deteriorating world. We might seem selfish and self indulgent. The only reason being this was what was taught to us. We played by the rules once but it didn't make the world any better. Now few we plan to change it into the idealistic world they said it would be. Well not all of us. There are many who have "Grown up" to be mature. They might have been lost in glamour of materialistic consumerism and the incessant need to act mature. But there are enough peter pans among us. We like to take things light-hearted. Enjoy the small and beautiful things in life. I am sure the non-peter pans of the peter pan generation just need a little trip down through memory lane to figure out that we still hold those old values and morals of the good old times, where the world we built was a perfect happy and wonderful one.

So all the people who is calling " The Peter Pan" generation in a negative way, I would like to raise three fingers. ( Index, middle and ring) and tell them- " Read between the lines! Douche bag! I am immature and I am determined never to grow up. What you gonna do about it?"

Comments appreciated especially from the Peter Pan generation.