Loneliness or Aloneness?

Who’s talkin’ bout my generation?

Loneliness: the state of being alone and feeling sad about it.

Aloneness: the state of being alone but feeling wonderful and in good company.

My Generation knows the difference.

My generation followed the baby boomers and preceded the millennials. Researchers use birth years around 1965 to 1980 to define us…we are the Generation Xers.

A generation is the creation of shared experiences, the things that happened, the things we all did and listened to and read, and created and went through and, just as important, the things that did not happen and that we didn’t do.

We were the generation to grow up with subpar video games and actual arcades where we spent hours playing our precious PAC-MAN, Frogger, and Galaga. We were the last generation to have the old-time, old-school childhood…one which I would describe as hands-on, dirty, full of pranks, interactive, practical, and fun.

I believe that generational identity and life phases and stages are contributing to how we are reacting to our current global pandemic reality. Generation Xers are stealing the spotlight for our amazing flexibility, resilience, our willingness to social quarantine without much complaint or protest, and our ability to entertain ourselves for hours upon end.

Hey, we grew up watching disaster movies like The Towering Inferno, Apocalypse Now, Jaws, and Godzilla…beloved movies that we watched for family fun. This helped us to get a glimpse of real-world tragedy, crisis, and epidemics, right?

My generation is patient. We learned from roller skating, falling down and getting up a hundred times. We learned by making mistakes over and over again. A lot of time was spent outdoors. We didn’t have on-line tutorials. We didn’t have personal trainers, personal coaches, or personal chefs. We taught ourselves. We were Siri. We were Alexa.

We stayed in our bedrooms reading books, writing in our diaries, and making collage poster boards from our Seventeen Magazine articles and cutouts (who knew it would take so long for Pinterest to catch up)- ha!

What about the 3-hours of regularly scheduled programming? My Saturday nights were already planned with this dreamy line up Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island. Maybe, just maybe, as a bonus, I could watch Dallas if my parents allowed me to stay up that late. By the way, enjoying boxes of sugary cereals was a must when plopped in front of the tv. To this day, Cap’n Crunch and Cocoa puffs are staples in my pantry.

I personally sat for hours waiting for my favorite songs to play on DJ Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 hits and recording songs on my cassette player only to have the DJ talk over it so I’d have to wait even longer to try again a second or third time. It would take all weekend in some instances. Patience was not a problem.

I’m making my case that Gen Xers are the best suitable to handle this global pandemic. Our childhoods taught us to be independent, self-reliant, and resourceful. We can create, write, read, puzzle, tackle big cleaning, and organizational projects. And….patient enough to just sit around and wait. Heck, we spent time in the back of station wagons (way before seatbelts were required) on lengthy road trips, waiting in long lines at the gas stations, and reading Encyclopedia Britannica for ‘quick’ fact-checking.

We thrive on aloneness and we sure do enjoy downtime, due to our advanced tolerance and affinity for boredom. You see we entertained ourselves thanks to the lousy, low-quality video games we played. Taking pictures? Not a problem.

We were professionals when it came to taking pictures with our Polaroid cameras and blowing on the pictures and fanning them in the air waiting for them to dry and develop. We weren’t self-absorbed so selfies didn’t exist.

We could write a letter to a friend, put it in the mail, and wait to receive a response 2-3 weeks later. We learned to ‘wait for the beep’ and leave messages on answering machines that may or may not be heard that same day. We had one tv that the family gathered around to watch the limited weekend line up of shows. There was a set time to watch our beloved Bewitched, Gilligans Island, Hogan’s Heroes, and I Dream of Jeannie sitcoms.

We could tell when our window began to close. You could hear it in the music we listened to. “Video Killed The Radio Star’ and ‘I Want My MTV’ were the exit signs for the Gen Xers…don’t get me wrong we were embracing MTV and were thrilled every time Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” could be heard blaring from our television sets. Technological distractions were just beginning. Oh if we only knew what was ahead….

We spent time being bored and resourceful in our bedrooms. We spent hours making those mixtapes on our 8 track players and dual cassettes. We spent long afternoons alone in our homes after school, eating Hostess Cupcakes, Devil Dogs, Ring Dings, and my brother’s favorite, Chef Boyardee’s SpaghettiOs.

We don’t require a lot of hand-holding because we can adapt to monotony and routine schedules pretty well. We have limited expectations and are easily entertained (thank you joystick games). Despite what Billy Squier, The Motels, Heart, and Bon Jovi sing and say about being ‘lonely,’ I think what they meant is aloneness was not a bad thing.

So now we are all grown up facing Covid-19 and being asked to quarantine and social distance for who knows how long. No problem…we’ve been training for this all our lives. So watch and learn people. Watch and learn. It’s time for this 80’s lady to go grab a twinkie and solve the Rubik’s Cube. Totally!!