Can we be the New Greatest Generation?

We recently marked the 75^th anniversary of the end of WWII. I hear a lot about “the Greatest Generation” I have always been a fan of WWII history, and my father landed at Normandy. (He had me in his mid-forties, and I was born in 1967). But most importantly, it has me thinking, will this time in history discover people ready to rise to the occasion and be the New Greatest Generation?

I am not sure why I love hearing about the history of WWII. Maybe it is because I have always been amazed at how quickly we united as a county to fight a common cause instead of each other. Maybe it is because those in Europe, brutalized and ravaged by the war, were able to survive and thrive, creating something from nothing (which you know is a critical focus for us right now). Maybe it is a combination of both. 

Because of Covid-19, we have not heard much about celebrating this milestone this year. But I want all of us to celebrate The Greatest Generation: we are here because of the sacrifices they made.

They say that history repeats itself. If we are to not only survive, but thrive, we will need to rally like those before us and become the New Greatest Generation. The challenges before us require nothing less.

I hope we can learn from their lessons of unity, hard work, sacrifice, and to not lose hope. Our survival may depend on it. 

What the New Greatest Generation has and will overcome

Even before a global pandemic, our generation has been faced with a lot to overcome:

• The attack of 911, and subsequent endless overseas wars
• The Great Recession, which personal cost me a multi-million dollar investment portfolio of commercial real estate.
• The rise of global aggressions that has fractured and frayed long-standing peaceful relationships worldwide.

Right about the time we think we have recovered from one tragedy we were hit with another.

Think back less than a year ago. December 31, 2019, we watched the ball drop with crowds packed shoulder to shoulder, face-to-face, in Times Square and counted down to a new year, 2020, a year of what? What did we expect?

Surely we were filled with hope.

Could anyone imagine then how much everything we know about normal life would change?

We now greet in masks and avoid crowds, much less massive gatherings like the ball drop on New Year’s Eve. We have seen hundreds of thousands of lives lost and we know 30 million Americans lost their jobs.

What is ahead? Will we come together? I wonder what they will call our generation, but I know if we are to thrive again and fulfill all the hope we once had, we must rise above it.

‘Time will tell if we’ll be called “the New Greatest Generation” but if we are to be, it will be because we chose to implement the lessons of unity, sacrifice, and the ability to create something from nothing that we learned from The Greatest Generation. 

Only then can we have a shot at earning the title of the New Greatest Generation.