Old Life Patterns Beneath Modernity

Every generation has the experience of growing apart from their parents. The ever accelerating forces of modernity assure that the "technology" (the way we accomplish our assignments at work) are startlingly different than the "technology" that was available to our parents when they were our age and in the workforce. Children who become adults and who achieve the American dream of doing better than their parents, frequently move into professional careers requiring college training that was inaccessible to their blue collar parents. How often have you and your friends commented on how you can't really talk to your parents about work because they just don't understand. The separating gulf seems wide and impassable. Your world is just too different. But is it really?

Well that's exactly how I felt for many years as my professional career developed. My father had been a New York City cab driver who worked long hours roaming the streets of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs. He was paid to sit on his butt and drive, taking his customers to whatever destination they desired. Now me, I was different. I was paid to use my head to solve problems and to teach others how to solve problems. That's what I concentrated on, that was the core of who I was and what I did.

I had several different jobs over the years ranging from consulting to teaching to managing but they all had one thing in common. I was responsible in one way or another for coordinating the delivery of my kind of services to multiple locations in a geographic region. It was on one of those forays, traveling from one site to another that the realization hit me. I spent an inordinate amount of my workday on the road, sitting on my butt, just like Pop. Our jobs had more than I ever imagined in common.

But it doesn't end there. I have two grown sons. The eldest is an attorney who travels between widely dispersed court houses and complains about his long commute to and from work. My other son works in Manhattan as I once did and commutes by subway from Brooklyn. I used to come in from the Bronx. The more things change ................