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.
