Generation Jumping

Someone once told me that people tend to be more like their grandparents than their parents. This seemed absurd to me at first because it seemed that a person would grow up trying to emulate those who had raised them - the parents. Well, upon greater reflection, it dawned on me the extraordinarily complex dynamic that is growing up. Maybe children do mimic their parents for a while, but then comes the teenage revolution. Parents become outdated, behind the times. What changed? Hormones, status, responsibility? A perfectly utopian world is turned upside down. Sitting in front of the television - vegging as placid as the open ocean - is replaced with worry, doubt and depression. Tumbling into a dark abyss, one is all but lossed to a world foreign to their fledgling eyes.
In these uncertain times, the question crosses my mind whether or not we, as individuals, are not microcosms of the world at large. Does life not ebb and flow like the tides? Do our emotions not erupt on occasion spilling over into the sea of languid tranquility? Raised by one generation, but resembling another? I certainly don't have a definitive answer. However, with the feeling that history is repeating itself, I can only wait for a time when the world reflects the placid temper of one with the time to ponder such thoughts.