Music for the jilted generation?

I used to talk to my grandparents a lot when they were still around, and in all those conversations about their lives and experiences I can't remember a single time when they expressed the feeling of being hard done by. They had all been reasonably successful and productive, two teachers, one a headteacher, a senior policeman and a housewife, but all had been through two World wars, all had come from working class backgrounds, two had come from fairly tough rural families, one from an industrial clothmaking family, all working from the age of about 10 or 11 in pretty touch conditions. They had had friends die in childhood, friends lost in the wars, all in all they were probably due one or two moans and whinges.

Compare this to my own generation, and bear in mind I fully count myself in this assessment. A quick survey of my peers finds a general feeling of dis-satisfaction with life. This in spite of the majority of my peers being university educated, generally employed, certainly owning more stuff than any of my grandparents, being more mobile in terms of transport options, generally having better health, certainly better healthcare, a better and wider choice of food, more leisure time and more activities to be involved in in that time, and overall, a better standard of living.

The Prodigy, a band that I am quite fond of, produced an album in the early 1990"s from which the title of this blog is taken, and it really does seem to sum up this difficult to grasp phenomenon. There seems to be a feeling that my generation, and the generations subsequent feel that they are missing out but can't quantify what they are missing out on. I suffer from this myself and I just can't explain it adequately, which is odd because I tend to pride myself on being deeply self aware and having strong self knowledge. I feel as though life owes me a living but I have no justification for this feeling, it just doesn't make sense. I can almost see happiness just ahead of me, and I am sure that at some point it will all amke sense and I will achieve it. I study happiness as a concept, and the lives of those people who seem to have found contentment, but is that part of the problem? Is my worrying about happiness a block to achieving it?

One day it will all make sense....