I’ve noticed an interesting trend among people around my age. It seems we’ve inherited something from the previous generation that we are now realizing has been a source of disconnectedness. For the most part my age group has been somewhat hostile to tradition in any form. Whether it is religious (especially this), cultural or anything else in between we’ve tried to make our own way and play by our own rules. We hate it when someone tells us that something has to be a specific way. We know there is more than one way to do something.

But this view isn’t entirely ours. We’ve inherited it. The sixties and seventies were a tumultuous time when many were fighting against the traditions handed down to them. These apparently constraining, narrow-minded and oppressive traditions wielded by self-appointed authorities were the source of ridicule and scorn. Indeed many of them were not just outmoded, but the manifestation of the misguided attempts of the modern era who thought objective reason could not be wrong. These attitudes were transferred indirectly to us by virtue of our proximity to these upheavals.

The problem now as I see it is that this jettisoning of the idea of tradition and the actual practices themselves has left many of us without a connection. Sure, we all have pop-culture to look back romantically at, but that is it. It ends there. Our connection is only an illusion. There lies the problem. Many that I’ve talked to are now feeling the effects of this rejection. Some look for real connections, some find traditions. This time, however, tradition isn’t an authoritarian rule of conduct, but a way of establishing a connection with a large segment of humanity. It is a vehicle for relating and sharing with others. It is something that we haven’t done or don’t do very often mostly out of habit now.

Now that we are realizing that the rejection we’ve inherited isn’t our own we can try something different and yet the same. Maybe we can now approach this notion of tradition with fresh minds that aren’t encumbered by the experiences of our forebears. This intended purpose of tradition to provide connection and continuity to groups is what many have missed out on. Somehow and at sometime it was changed into some sort of authoritarian sledgehammer that people eventually rejected. It seems many are trying tradition like a new pair of clothes and realizing that they’ve been missing out on an important part of the human experience. Where to discover, invent and practice these traditions will be the topic of a future post.