The Most Important Job of Our Generation

This is a story we’re writing all together. The heroes and ordinary farmers. The sinners and the saints. The Boomers, the Zoomers, everyone in between, and all the generations that will come here after us.

We are all gonna make it, but not without your help.

However you’re feeling about your life right now, there exist an Adult and Elder version of you. They’re wiser, happier, more beautiful, more competent, and more satisfied with their lives than anything you ever imagined possible. They act confidently in the world. They know their limits and how to expand them. They love life with all their hearts, and just can’t help but share their wisdom, gifts, and blessings with everyone around.

Just like an acorn will always grow into a magnificent old tree when the conditions are right, we were all meant to grow into the Adult and Elders as we get older. But some time in the last century that transmission got lost. Our world is a very different one than that of our grandparents. What worked for many hundreds of years won’t take us where we need to go next.

Our ancestors lived in war, hunger, and unimaginable poverty, and yet they carried on for the sake of their children and grandchildren. Their hard effort has already paid off. If my great-grandmother could see how I’m living right now, she would cry out of joy. She struggled to keep her children alive and fed so that I can now live in unbelievable abundance.

The technological revolution has changed our lives forever. It brought about its own problems too, like climate change, depression, or severe loneliness. These are now our problems to solve, every generation has its own job in this endless procession of life.

How can we leave a beautiful world for our grandchildren and their grandchildren to live in? How can we become good stewards of life? Our ancestors’ ways were half timeless wisdom, half solutions to problems that no longer exist. It is our job to look back and figure out which is which.

There are still village grandmas and grandpas who remember the old ways. They happily share what they know with anyone who wants to listen. Plant medicine healers in Amazonian jungle or traditional folk singers in Ukraine, they all carry ancient gifts that our world needs currently so much.

But it is not enough only to learn their ways. We must compare it with everything else that we know. There are as many ways to become an Elder as there are people, and each of us has to find their own best, everchanging, and very personal way to do it.

This is the job of a lifetime, but it is also the most exciting and satisfying job that one can ever have.

And to solve problems at large scale, we need to bring it all together. Everything we learned in our personal journeys, ancient wisdom from other corners of the world, or the latest breakthrough discoveries. Every single one of us holds a piece of the puzzle. It is your personal unique perspective that is crucial for us all to get a complete picture.

We all come from a long line of beautiful and horrifying and tragic and wonderful and heroic and ordinary people who did their best with whatever tools they were given. We’re so lucky to be given incredible tools at this time and age. Every person on the planet and every book ever written in any corner of the world is always right at our fingertips. As long as we keep talking to each other, sincerely sharing and receiving with an open heart, and trying different things to see what actually works, there’s no problem we can’t all figure out together.

This is the most important job of our generation. To put it all together, everything we know so far, and see how we can use it all to leave a beautiful world for our children and grandchildren. We must become the Elders we always wished we had, and for this we must figure out the way, each of us separately and all of us together. We are not alone in this, all the generations that came before us have already done their part, and they are all are quietly rooting here for us right now.

I’ve mentioned here before there might be a book in the making. I think it’s slowly beginning to take shape. The Elder’s Journey is a personal account of how I’m learning to serve our family, community, and planet in the best way possible, and all the things I found useful to get there. It won’t be a universal tutorial of how to become an Elder as these are impossible, but it might inspire someone to search for their own way.

My friends Visa says you shouldn’t write a book unless you absolutely must. I’ve come to accept that this is a thing I must do. I hope it will come together at some time in 2024, along with our new house and hopefully another kid.

I will keep posting short fragments here as I’m writing them. I still need to find a good cadence, but having one does me well.

In the meantime, if you want to help me bring this book into life, you can become a paying subscriber here:

Welcome to the Elder’s Journey. The adventure has only just begun.