I often ask my parents for advice. They’ve known me since, well, always and they often do a great job. But what they totally fail with is predicting my future. They tend to draw from their own experiences, and honestly, those are outdated. The circumstances of my generation have completely changed from the ones ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Times, they are a changing so rapidly – living in the twenties now is completely different from living in the twenties of the 1980ies.
This thought seems trivial, but it’s not. A lot of decision makers are in their 50ies and 60ies and most of what they know about youth is what they’ve experienced 40 years ago. «When I was your age..» I often get to hear. But advice drawn from expired experience are well-meant false friends – faux amis. They seem to be fitting, but have a completely different context to them.
I still take the advice, of course, but with more precaution.