The first time I heard John Mayer’s song, "Waiting on the World to Change," I was ecstatic. I had a vision of joining together with an intoxicating fervor. Finally, this is the social commentary that would be the spark igniting my peers into action. Instead of waiting for the baby boomers to roll over and relinquish control, we’d rise up and take it!

Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Apparently my generation is perfectly content to continue waiting. In fact, I don’t believe many of my peers are even standing in line. I’m pretty sure they’re all out back hiding behind some trees trying to avoid the shift in power all together.

I can’t blame my generation’s shared apathy to the impending inheritance of the world, especially in its current state. Every minute of every waking hour, the media is saturated with images and sounds illustrating death, doom, and destruction occurring on the planet. And as we look around, we can’t help but hold our parents partly accountable for the condition of the world.  

But it’s not entirely the boomers’ fault. They were completely unprepared to handle the globalization that bloomed under their feet. Unfortunately, love isn’t a redeemable currency. So they made choices based on what they believed to be right at that time, and with little regard for the future. Now, they’re slowly coming to terms with those choices.

And it’s not that the boomers don’t want to fix some of the disastrous outcomes of the decisions they made. But, they’re old. And they’re tired. And they’re much more concerned with recapturing the 40-plus years they’ve wasted away at an unfulfilling job. Just as I can’t blame my generation for not wanting to take responsibility for the crumbling world, I can’t blame my parents’ generation for their inability to fix it.

As more and more boomers turn the corner onto the path toward retirement, they are experiencing a second coming of age. New retirees are becoming introspective as they are afforded more time for leisure and relaxation. Seeing the mountains of material things amassed over the years in search of happiness, the boomers are now finding solace in using the fruits of their labor to experience and to explore. And this realization is slowly starting to seep into the psyche of my generation.

As the boomers are running to the finish, my generation is floundering in its first steps. We’ve enjoyed a cushy life free of difficult decisions and burgeoning responsibility. College isn’t the liberating, mind-expanding rebellion our parents experienced. Technology has made it easy to continue living under a shroud of parental influence. And while we hear our parents when they tell us to get a job to make lots of money, we can’t help but squirm a little.

Whereas the boomers experienced a temporary freedom from parental control, we haven’t had the chance to escape. Although I dream for my generation to collectively rise up and demand control, everyone is still trying to figure it out. Defiance will come upon the realization that we are capable of making it on our own without the help of our parents. But until then, I’ll just continue to wait.

Julia Pflaum