Get to know Lucy. She is part of Generation Y, people born from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s. Lucy is also considered part of the Yuppie culture (young urban professional or young upwardly-mobile professional).
For such Yuppies from Generation Y, a special term can be introduced - Excellent Y Generation. Or just a navel. The navel is a unique view of Yuppie who thinks he is the centerpiece of some of his own special universe.
And so, Lucy enjoys her navel, and she is very happy to be Lucy. Only one small snag: Lucy is somehow not very happy.
In order to understand why this is so, we need to determine what happiness or unhappiness is. And for this there is a simple formula:
It is quite simple: when an individual’s reality turns out to be better (bigger, higher) than his expectations, he is happy. When reality is worse (less, lower) than expectations, the individual is unhappy.
To explain the system as a whole, we need to get to know Lucy's parents.
Lucy's parents were born in the 50s and 60s, during the time of the Great Fertility. They were brought up by Lucy's grandfathers and grandmothers, who are part of a generation of heroes who survived the times of the Great Depression and who collectively fought in various wars. It is certain that they are not navels.
Lucy's grandparents were raised with thoughts of economic security and stability, and they taught Lucy's parents to choose a practical and reliable career. Grandparents always wanted the grass on the lawn of Lucy's parents to be greener than their own. Thus, Lucy's parents came to thoughts about a prosperous and growing career. It looks something like this:
They were sure that nothing would stop them from striving for this juicy, green growing career lawn, but they would need to put years of life and hard work to make this a reality.
After graduating from university and having a happy student year, Lucy's parents set off on their career goals. As a result, in the 70s, 80s, 90s, the world saw an unprecedented economic rise. Lucy's parents did everything even better than they expected. This made them happy and optimistic.
With such a successful and more positive life experience than their own parents, Lucy's parents raised her with a sense of optimism and endless possibilities. And not only they are alone. Parents from the Big Fertility generation around the world raised their children from Generation Y with the idea that they could become whoever they want. Thus, parents laid a sense of uniqueness deep in the psyche of their children.
This led to the fact that the pups began to perceive their own career expectations very optimistic and the career lawns of their parents seemed to them even not high enough. Pup should have a real lawn with flowers!
A real navel expects much more from his career lawn than just reliability and safety. The fact is that such a simple lawn is not individual enough and unique for the navel. While parents from the Great Fertility generation wanted to live simply in the Bright Future, real Navels want to live exclusively in their Personal Special Bright Future.
Statistics from Google show that the phrase "reliable career" over the past 20 years is becoming less and less popular, while the popularity of the phrase "successful career" is growing by leaps and bounds.
To make it clearer, navels want economic prosperity just like their parents. Just navels, in addition, want such a successful career as their parents did not even think at one time.
But something else happens. While the career goals of Generation Y are becoming more unique and ambitious, Lucy receives a second message from her childhood:
This leads us to the second fact about the navel: the navel often raves.
Lucy thinks: “Of course, now everyone is heading towards successful careers, but I am so extraordinarily magnificent that my achievements will still stand out from the crowd.” Thus, in this generation, in addition to a career green lawn with flowers, each Pup thinks that something unique and individual is waiting for him - the Brilliant Unicorn on top of a flower lawn!