Faith Works 9-6-24
Jeff Gill
A visual sense of generations passing
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What is a generation?
Twenty years is one standard definition, but in some contexts you'll find twenty-one years, and thirty years comes up from time to time. The general idea is a span from birth to when a person could begin a generation of their own.
We also have demographic "generations," such as the "Greatest Generation" or the "Baby Boom." Those intervals have a common definition, and a formal demographic interval. To have been in service in World War II means you were born before about 1924; the formal definitions include those born from 1901 to 1927, but some sources cite 1900 to 1925. Born in 1927, you'd barely make 18 by 1945, but we define World War II service in federal regulations through December 31, 1946.
Baby Boomers? The children of the Greatest Generation, they are sometimes defined as those born from 1946 to 1964, but I find references in sociological literature to Boomers starting as early as 1944 and ending anywhere from 1960 to 1965.
Myself, I'm born in 1961, and I have to say that in common references to the Boomer mindset and worldview I don't know that I fit. In general, I don't feel like a Boomer. There's one definition that does make sense to me, and that's tied to whether or not you remember where you were when JFK was shot. I recall President Kennedy's funeral with odd clarity, but nothing of the day he was assassinated.
Gen X is puzzlingly tagged as being born between 1965 and 1980, which is fifteen years, versus nineteen for the Boomers; Greatest Generation intervals are twenty-five or twenty-six years. Millennials get the period from 1981 to 1986, another fifteen year interval, then Generation Z is the term for those born 1997 to 2012, another fifteen year "generation."
Let's just concede none of us want to see fifteen year olds having children, and admit that demography is an art more than a science.
In any case, we have the passage of years, four seasons in cycle, and the need to find a way to define broader trends in taste and culture and social patterns as "a generation." Times change, and there are characteristics of each era, every succeeding generation, which are somewhat unique to them. We've left out the Silent Generation which was the era my parents were born into (seventeen years, generally), and those born from 2012 are already reaching today what many cultures would call their majority, a new generation called perhaps Generation Alpha ?
Gen Z were the first "digital natives," raised entirely in an internet oriented world. Generation Alpha have always known a world where the broadcast networks and channel guides are an afterthought, where "texts" are primarily digital.
But I go back to 1947, and "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir." Have you seen the movie? Black and white, I must confess, with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison and Natalie Wood. Greatest Generation folk loved it from the start, while the Silent Generation and Boomers would have been more likely to watch it on re-run on their broadcast televisions, late at night.
Regardless, there's a scene towards the end where a piling in the ocean surf is seen which had "Anna Muir" carved on it. The passing of generations is shown by a montage sequence of the post slowly tilting as the waves batter it, the inscription steadily aging and softening. Anna then is seen as not a young girl, but an adult woman, the aging timber standing in for her fast-forward development.
Are there other ways to mark the passage of generations? Not in the effects of aging or decay, or the growth of cemeteries and the extent of burials, but to see the passage of time as growth and change in a constructive way?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's watching the generations pass from his front porch, which is one way. Tell him how you mark time at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads
