Generational happiness
Each generation should try and leave the world a better place. However, it is easy for one generation to blame another generation for the world’s ills … whether it be an increase in global conflicts or a worsening jobs market.
For example, young people today could easily accuse baby boomers of having a far easier run. It is true that trying to buy into the housing market or find a rental is much more difficult than it was twenty or thirty years ago. Costs have soared and the cost of living has not been able to keep pace.
Many young people also carry a huge HECS debt and are constrained financially before they even start off in life.
Not surprisingly, a recent survey suggests that young adults aren’t as happy as they used to be, and that U-shaped curve is starting to flatten. For decades, research showed that the way people experienced happiness across their lifetimes looked like a U-shaped curve. Happiness tended to be high when they were young, then declined in midlife, only to jump again as they grew older.
A collection of papers published earlier this year in the journal, Nature Mental Health, based on data from the Global Flourishing Study (Harvard and Baylor universities) found that, on average, young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 were struggling. They were struggling with their happiness, their physical and mental health, their perceptions of their own character, finding meaning in life, and the quality of their relationships and their financial security.
The data was collected from self-reported surveys of about 200,000 people in more than 20 countries, including Australia.
Despite this, it is not all doom and gloom. In Rome at the weekend, more than one million ‘happy’ young Catholics from 146 countries attended the Jubilee Year of Youth Mass. The pope encouraged those present to “spread your enthusiasm and the witness of your faith to everyone you meet”.
Pope Leo XIV also told the crowd, “Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are. Do not settle for less.”
Despite the financial obstacles many young people are facing today, it was pleasing to see young Catholics in high spirits. And to see their happy faces!
Feature image: The pope greets young Catholics at the Jubilee of Youth vigil. Photo: Simone Risoluti/Vatican Media)@Vatican Media.
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