Elections, at their core, are all about change. Voters are asked to keep the same candidate or party, or change them up for something and someone new. 

They’re asked by pollsters if we’re on the right track or wrong track. That’s a gage to see how voters are feeling about the things going on around them and thus determine if they’re likely to want a change or not.

Then there’s the changes themselves. Anyone who has ever been sent to a corporate management training seminar has probably had to do an exercise or three to demonstrate the core truism of human nature:  People fear change.

Life in this millennium has become quite frightening for many, as change is not only constant but the rate of change is ever increasing. How we do things, how we receive information, how we make and spend money, and the neighborhoods and communities in which we live are all changing.  

A lot of us have no idea what to make of it. Many fear we – individually and collectively – are losing control over it.

How we view this depends a lot on our age.  We look at the same changes which provide different fuels for our collective anxieties.

Those of us that are older and set in our ways don’t necessarily like having to learn new ways to do the same old things.  We grew up with three TV channels and likely don’t watch many more than that now, despite having hundreds to choose from.  We’re irritated that they’re now spread across a half dozen streaming channels that cost us a lot more than our old cable bundle. 

We’re mad when we can’t get a live person on the phone, and when we can the people only respond with pre-written scripts and rarely can solve the problem we called about. We totally can’t understand ordering food from a kiosk that then asks us to add a gratuity.

We do, however, have a life of experiences to gage these changes against.  We know the world as it once was, how it is now, and can somewhat figure out the difference between changes that are fads, which ones are longstanding, and more importantly, which ones matter.

We often forget that while “the kids” are used to change and often quicker to adapt to them – especially the changes in technology – they lack the time horizon to fully appreciate the big picture that helps with grounding and our illusions of certainty. 

One of my favorite occurrences about this time of year is when articles begin to appear about life current college freshmen have never experienced.  This year’s class was born approximately 2008.  The iPhone was introduced to the world in 2007.  

These kids now in college don’t know a world that didn’t include the iPhone.  If their parents were cutting edge early adopters of technology, they had Blackberries.  A lot of them had flip phones. Some even had Nextel phones with two-way radios.  A lot of money was made or lost on bets for which of those technologies would win. Most of them didn’t.

This is not to say those who are younger and more comfortable with change don’t have the anxieties that come with it.  These college freshmen lived with the Covid shutdown during their middle school years. They had to distance themselves from friends, missed a large gap in their education, and many were forced to wear masks indoors for a couple of years based on dubious at best science. 

They’ve earned their distrust in how adults and systems deal with change, how it will affect them, and whether adults that talk about what’s best for kids and the future are really just trying to enact policies that benefit themselves. They’re wise to hold these suspicions. 

The successful candidate is the one that not only understands the apprehensions surrounding change, but can offer tangible paths and explanations for how their proposed changes will make lives better, or remind voters how the opponent and/or their party has or will make lives worse.  This message needs to cut across all demographic categories, with some understanding that age matters when considering change.