Recently, during a visit to my hometown, I had an outing with my much younger cousins. That’s when it hit me—how much of a fossil I’ve become. It had been ages since I’d hung out with people significantly younger than me in a casual, no-agenda setting.
These are the times when almost everything gets blamed on Gen Z.
- Office screw-up? Must be Gen Z.
- Road rage incident? Gen Z again.
- Avalanche somewhere in the Himalayas? Obviously Gen Z.
I mean, poor kids can’t catch a break.
Now, by nature, I’m an introvert. Over the years, I’ve leaned more and more into my recluse-meets-pseudo-monk phase. But that day, something broke the pattern.
I was walking at Fort Kochi with my wife and our three-year-old daughter, joined by my cousin (who’s a good ten years younger). Soon, her sister and a friend hopped in as well. A dinner plan suddenly came together, but since my car was parked some distance away, my cousin’s friend offered to give me a lift on her scooter.
According to my wife, it was a hilarious sight: a middle-aged, uptight man clinging for dear life to the back rail of a scooter, while a funky girl in her early 20s zoomed through the streets like it was a Need for Speed level.
That moment hit me harder because I remembered my teenage days—when I used to give my grandfather rides on my modified Pulsar with a custom exhaust. I’d zigzag through traffic just to scare him out of his wits. Life really does come full circle.
It’s almost a universal law: older generations look at younger ones with contempt. The “we’ve suffered more, so you don’t know real life” kind of attitude.
But is that fair? I don’t think so.
Maturity, in my experience, doesn’t come stamped with age. It’s a by-product of getting knocked around by life. Those hard, foot-in-the-mouth, ego-crushing experiences shape you—not just the number of candles on your birthday cake. If you live 100 years in a cave, you’re not mature. You’re just…old.
Back to my story. At dinner, I found myself genuinely blown away by the conversations I had with these “kids” (and yes, calling three women in their early 20s kids is fossil behavior, I admit).
I was expecting polite small talk or the stereotypical politically correct jargon Gen Z supposedly thrives on. Instead, I was met with sharp, clear, thought-provoking discussions—on politics, literature, art, music, inclusivity—you name it.
It was refreshing. It shattered my lazy assumptions. And honestly, it left me with immense respect for them.
Maybe we all need to drop our inhibitions and hang out with people younger than us more often. The world looks very different through their lens. And sometimes, that fresh perspective is exactly what we need to un-fossilize ourselves.