Three Star Millennials

Today I gained an understand of the plight of Millennials by taking a survey they constructed. I recently completed my first AirBnB stay. It was in the right place and adequate in both cleanliness and price. The next day I receive the obligatory survey email. I have learned not to fill out surveys, but in this case I thought there were a couple of things people should know that I had missed in the details.
I gave it 3 stars … Oh NO Mr Bill … what was wrong!
Average or typical is not acceptable, everything must be 5-stars or you have failed. With this worldview, your life is going to be a disappointment for hours, days, weeks, months even years at a time. I know people who have the money to buy 5-star surroundings and they still struggle with fulfillment and finding purpose or meaning. This is a fact of the human condition.
Zen practice is about getting you to see the richness within things just as they are. So far Zen has not integrated this into the culture. The yoga world has done a better job propagating this teaching in the west. I see this in the millions of people who are now comfortable squeezing their average bodies into Lycra and heading out into the world. On the mat, it is about finding your edge in a pose and depending on the day, accepting that or pushing it. While you strive to be a pretzel standing on it’s big toe like the teacher, you accept your condition.
Life is the same, strive AND except.
From a millennial view my stay would have been a better if it had an element so disgusting it was social media worthy, making it a 1-star experience. Why is zero stars not an option in their world?
5-stars is an experience and 1-star is an experience, but 2,3,4 is a bust. My generation grew up working hard to move our lives from 3s to 4s and not have life deal us a 2. We dreamed of 5 and feared 1.
In the opening paragraph, I used the word plight after consideration. Some of the above is a normal generational push against the previous, like the 60s. Possibly, being one side of that coin, I can never understand. What I do understand is that the numbers are coming in and despair diseases and suicide are spiking during the current generation gap.
As a generation, we set our kids off in a tough direction. They will course correct on their own, along with casualties, as they wind through the human development process. We do not need to save them. This is likely the exact experience they need to be the new great generation in a few decades. Yet, it is good as ‘the elders’ to understand them and consider safety nets.
May your life go well

