Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the
late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that
makes up a large portion of Gen Y.
Lucy’s parents were born in the 50s—they’re Baby Boomers. They were
raised by Lucy’s grandparents, members of the G.I. Generation, or “the
Greatest Generation,” who grew up during the Great Depression and fought
in World War II, and were most definitely not GYPSYs.
Lucy’s Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic
security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers.
They wanted her parents’ careers to have greener grass than their own,
and Lucy’s parents were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable
career for themselves. Something like this:
After graduating from being insufferable hippies, Lucy’s parents
embarked on their careers. As the 70s, 80s, and 90s rolled along, the
world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Lucy’s
parents did even better than they expected to. This left them feeling
gratified and optimistic.
With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their own
parents, Lucy’s parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and
unbounded possibility. And they weren’t alone. Baby Boomers all around
the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever
they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep
within their psyches.
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I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y
Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique
brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very
special story.
So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing:
Lucy’s kind of unhappy.
To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone
happy or unhappy in the first place. It comes down to a simple formula:
It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is
better than they had expected, they’re happy. When reality turns out to
be worse than the expectations, they’re unhappy.
To provide some context, let’s start by bringing Lucy’s parents into the discussion:
They were taught that there was nothing stopping them from getting
to that lush, green lawn of a career, but that they’d need to put in
years of hard work to make it happen.
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