What’s common to miss here is that when one generation’s life becomes comparatively easier than before, their life does not become objectively easy; they just move on to worrying about higher-order problems that were previously deemed not urgent enough to worry about.

One generation worries about how to get food and shelter.

The next doesn’t have to worry about food and shelter but frets about security.

The next has security but worries about disease.

The next tackles disease but worries about education.

The next gets education but worries about work-life balance.

On and on. It’s the classic John Adams line, which I’ll paraphrase: “I studied war so my kids will have the liberty to study engineering. They will study engineering so their kids can have the liberty to study philosophy, whose kids can have the liberty to study art.”

I hope my kids and grandkids won’t have to worry about cancer in the ways we do. I hope they have incredible technology that makes their jobs easier than ours. I hope that everyday frictions we deal with today disappear. I hope their energy is so abundant they consider it unlimited.

Is that spoiled? I suppose, but when you frame it like that you might think of a different word – perhaps “lucky,” or, “fortunate.”

Or perhaps, “beneficiaries of the accumulated hard work of those who came before them in a way that leaves them able to spend their days solving new problems.”

Source: Long-Term Money

This is something that H and I constantly chat about. I sometimes tend to fall into the trap of thinking that the next generation is “spoiled” despite rationally understanding the other framing.

The one thing I do believe in more and more is that you cannot ask your kids to do something the hard way and then you choose it to do the easy way, because as a kid you did it the hard way.

Take screens for example: I believe it’s extremely unfair to ask our children to stop their video game time or restrict screen time while I scroll away to oblivion. I had rationalized it as “work” and it was only when I didn’t have work that I realized how much time I was spending staring at a rectangular slab.

I cannot expect my son to be more social than me. I cannot expect my son to be more amenable to challenges than I am.

So, I’ve taken a different tack. I am practicing what I ask of him. We both put our screens away. We both choose to do a physical activity. We both take on hard challenges and face them together.

I don’t know if I have the right answer. However, I do know that at least I am not going to come across as hypocritical.