I valued Zoe Williams’ insightful article (In the war between snowflakes and boomers, I’m with the kids. If only it wasn’t so easy to laugh at them..., 22 November). As a 49-year-old, it seems to me that the younger generation are far more sensitive and naturally empathic than we are, leading them to experience what we would call “the normal ups and downs of life” much more intensely than we ever did.
It is far easier to dismiss their very intense experience of life, and make a joke of it, than it is to take courage and face the discomfort of opening our hearts to pain – theirs or our own – particularly if there’s a lot of pent-up and unacknowledged emotion bubbling away under the surface, threatening to spill over.
I commend the youth of today for their emotional courage and honesty in facing what is often a very harsh world, for it is in this very open, direct and often raw acknowledgement of our pain that the healing of it can start.
Maja McEwan
Cape Town, South Africa
• Zoe Williams needs to try a bit of real empathy instead of mockingly playing with the sensitivity of younger people. I am 61, and ashamed that our generation, with our lack of sensitivity, has pretty much brought the world as we know it to an environmental and economic dead end.
We hand this anxious situation on to the young, and expect them to provide solutions, then laugh at their feelings and ability to express themselves. The so-called “snowflake generation”, who call out abuse and name their upsets, appear to me far more emotionally aware, humane and responsible than my generation.
Sushila Dhall
Oxford
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