I have to admit something that I’m not especially proud of.
Every so often, I catch myself saying the same thing I’ve heard countless people my age say.
“Kids these days just don’t want to work.”
It’s usually after reading another story about “quiet quitting” or another post about someone refusing a job because the work-life balance isn’t right. The thought arrives almost automatically because it has become one of those cultural scripts we inherit without noticing. Every older generation eventually convinces itself that the next one simply doesn’t have the same grit.
But the more I travel and meet students around the world, the harder it is becoming to reconcile that stereotype with the people standing in front of me.
Last week, I found myself following the student protests unfolding across India. Depending on who you ask, they’re about entrance examinations, reservation policies, employment, or government accountability. Maybe. But I found myself noticing something else.
Nobody watching those students could honestly describe them as lazy.
Organizing thousands of people across cities isn’t laziness. Sustaining a movement for weeks isn’t laziness. Coordinating information, mobilizing peers, and accepting personal risk require exactly the kinds of discipline, commitment, and persistence that older generations often claim this generation lacks.
Which made me wonder whether we’ve been diagnosing the wrong problem all along.
Perhaps we have confused compliance with character for so long that we’ve stopped recognizing discipline when it takes a different form.
For decades, hard work looked remarkably similar. You showed up on time. You respected hierarchy. You kept your opinions to yourself until someone senior asked for them. You stayed loyal to employers who often weren’t loyal to you because that was simply what responsible adults did. We admired endurance almost more than effectiveness. The ability to tolerate frustration became a badge of honor, even when the frustration itself served no meaningful purpose.
It isn’t difficult to see why many older adults look at Gen Z and conclude that something essential has been lost. They don’t see themselves in this generation because this generation isn’t playing by the same rules.
But perhaps that is because the rules themselves have changed.
For most of my life, the advice we gave young people was remarkably consistent. Study hard. Get into the best school you can. Earn the degree. Work harder than everyone around you and eventually the world will notice. It was never a guarantee, but it was believable enough that millions of families built their lives around it.
Today, fewer young people are convinced that the bargain still exists.
Can we really blame them for asking different questions than we did?
A degree no longer guarantees meaningful work. Entire industries are being reshaped by artificial intelligence before graduates have even entered them. Housing feels increasingly out of reach in many parts of the world. Institutions ask for trust they have not always earned. Around the globe, young people are looking at systems that seem to demand more while promising less.
If you grew up watching the finish line move every time you got closer to it, you might start questioning the race itself.
As someone who has spent decades working with students around the world, I have watched thousands of young people do exactly what we asked of them. They studied harder. Collected credentials. Sacrificed sleep. Delayed joy. Built the résumé first and trusted that life would somehow catch up.
Increasingly, I meet graduates who did everything right and still find themselves wondering whether the finish line moved while they were running.
I understand why they are frustrated but their frustration cannot become the end of the story.
I also think we’re describing their frustration too narrowly.
This isn’t simply about finding a job or buying a house. It is about trying to build a life while the definition of work itself is changing beneath their feet.
For most of modern history, people had a reasonable idea of the future they were preparing for. A lawyer expected to practice law. An accountant expected to become an accountant. An engineer could reasonably assume the profession would look familiar ten years later.
Gen Z doesn’t have that certainty.
Many of the careers they are preparing for will change dramatically before they reach the middle of them. Some may disappear altogether. Others haven’t been invented yet. We keep telling young people to make long-term plans while the ground beneath those plans continues to move.
That doesn’t make hard work any less important. But it does make adaptability more important than it has ever been.
Every generation inherits an unfinished world.
Some inherit broken economies. Others inherit political instability. Others inherit technological revolutions that rewrite the rules almost overnight. The circumstances are different, but the responsibility is remarkably consistent.
None of us gets to choose the world we inherit. We only get to decide what the next generation inherits from us.
Perhaps this is where education has failed this generation most profoundly.
For decades, education optimized students for selection. Get into the right school. Win the scholarship. Secure the internship. Land the job. We became exceptionally good at preparing students to be chosen by someone else, just as the world was beginning to reward something very different: the ability to create value before anyone gave them permission.
We prepared students to compete for opportunities that were becoming increasingly scarce while spending far less time teaching them how to create opportunities that had never existed before. In an age increasingly shaped by AI, that distinction is no longer academic. It may become the difference between waiting to be chosen and becoming impossible to ignore.
This is why I keep coming back to the idea of proof.
Not as something that belongs on a résumé or another credential to collect.
I mean proof as the kind of contribution that continues to matter after you’ve moved on. It is the work someone else can build upon. It is the difference between having an opinion about the future and having a hand in shaping it.
That standard applies to governments, to universities, to employers. And it certainly applies to the generation that will inherit the world after ours.
If I had one message for my own generation, it would be this.
Stop asking why young people don’t think like we do.
They shouldn’t.
The world they inherited is not the world we inherited. Our responsibility is not to demand that they relive our experience. It is to help them navigate theirs.
And if I had one message for Gen Z, it would be equally simple.
I hope your generation never loses its instinct to question institutions. Every healthy society needs people willing to ask uncomfortable questions. History rarely moves forward because everyone remained politely silent. But there comes a point when questioning alone is no longer enough. Eventually, every generation has to become responsible for what it builds. That is the harder task.
The students marching through the streets of India have demonstrated remarkable courage and coordination. Those qualities deserve recognition. But protests are not destinations. They are beginnings. Their greatest contribution will never be measured by the size of the crowds they gathered. It will be measured by the quality of the institutions, businesses, ideas, and communities they build afterward.
History has never lacked people willing to explain what was broken. It has always needed more people willing to repair it.
Leadership begins not the moment you identify the problem, but the moment you accept responsibility for improving it.
Eventually, every protest has to become a blueprint, every criticism has to become a contribution, and every generation has to become the adults it spent years waiting for.
So build something.
Build a company.
Build a classroom.
Build a community.
Build trust.
Build a life that leaves the people who come after you with more than you inherited.
Every generation gets its test. And this is yours.
The world you inherit explains you. But it does not excuse you.
History rarely remembers generations for the fairness of the world they inherited. It remembers them for what they left behind.
Ex Cogitatione, Progressus
Girish
