There are an unfortunate number of pampered older “children” who are floundering into their twenties and beyond. They may have several university degrees but they do not have the life skills or financial resources to live independently. They go to school and they rule the world. Now, without jobs or money, they boomerang back home to their old rooms or set up semi-permanent living suites in basements and garages. As time passes, these emerging adults find fewer and fewer people who seem interested in listening to their poems or hearing their philosophical take on pop culture. As their elite peers pass them by, they become increasing bitter and angry. They were the entitled ones, so what happened? They feel betrayed by. They incessantly twitter among themselves about the unfairness of it all.
In their present mindset, parental conversations about hard work, entrepreneurship, and personal sacrifice would be pointless. The concepts are too alien. Since they expect to be attending corporate board meeting, they do not take well to mean supervisors asking them to stock shelves. Until they are re-indoctrinated to reality, they are unemployable.
Further enablement is not a solution. More formal education is rarely the answer. The hope for emerging adults would be to regress and learn the important life/work lessons that were missed in adolescence. Yes, with great humility, accept a small part-time job. Make a little money. See the value in work. See the correlation between hard work and self-reliance. Yes, majoring in avant-garde theater or community journalism as viable career choices may have been a big waste of time and money. Now, stop making mistakes. Now, get a job. Start saving. Find a roommate and rent an apartment. Drive a clunker. Wake up. Start crawling back to the real world. For the awakened, the condition is reversible. Awakened, good things begin happening very quickly. Yes, awakened, the fry cook can become the franchise owner. Emerge.
