My wife and I were watching the PBS Bob Dylan documentary, with differing levels of interest. After the show ended, I asked her if she enjoyed it, or something like that. She indicated that while she appreciated Dylan’s significance, she came on the scene well after he’d made his mark and didn’t have a personal connection to his music.

Now my wife is only a little younger than I, but I realized that I barely felt a personal connection to his music myself, even though I’d made the coffeehouse circuit in high school, stumbling through Gates of Eden and With God On Our Side. If he’d been a baseball player, I might have known about him as a preteen, but I missed the moment of the Dylan tsunami. I saw the wreckage, the receding storm clouds, etc., but I had to rely on reports of the event.

The Dylan thing is a cusp experience for me. My wife is just younger enough for Dylan to be almost an historical rather than contemporary figure. The slightly separate experiences we shared pointed out the smallest of gulfs between my wife and myself. We travel through this life in the same railway car in many ways and on many items. On Dylan, we’re more in connecting cars than the same car.

So, if this is true with the One I Hold Most Dear, how separated is my experience from people ten years younger? 15 years? 20? And how do these differences affect my interactions with these people in ways seen, but misunderstood, and completely unseen? What things do I take for granted that are in the Foreign Language/Ancient History department for my daughter and her peers?

One source of information and insight into this is published yearly by Beloit College. It started as a private project of one professor, and was designed to answer the question: What is the mindset of incoming freshmen and how does it differ from that of the faculty charged with educating them? The experiential bubble that we all walk around in can not only impede learning and growth, but also give us the false impression that the way we think is the way everybody thinks, and what I know, everybody knows. What’s normal and sensible for me is The Norm. As the Mindset List shows, Normal is Relative.

The first year the Beloit Mindset List was published was 2002. The incoming freshman class was born in 1980. That group of people came to college not only with no experience of JFK being shot, but no meaningful experience of Reagan being shot. They only knew one pope, and really only one president other than Dubya. They have no memory of the Cold War, the space shuttle blowing up, or a world without AIDS. Atari? Pong? Jordache jeans? No idea what you’re talking about. Never seen Larry Bird play, Johnny Carson host Tonight or a black&white TV set. Americans held hostage in Iran? Was that, like during the Vietnam War, or the Civil War … somewhere way back then? If you ask what do these names have in common – Kansas, Alabama, Boston, Chicago – they’ll say they are names of places. They won’t know the musical groups.

Now imagine you’re teaching freshman PoliSci, or History or Chemistry with no idea the group of people seated in front of you do not share your PoV. How effective can you be if you assume they are just younger versions of you?

While the learning burden must be shared between the teacher and the student, the larger portion must always be the responsibility of the more experienced hand. Does this mean teachers must cater to every whim and quirk of their students? Of course not. But we ignore the differences between us at our peril, and cannot expect to communicate clearly and effectively with everyone because we can do so with those who are like us.

I guess this is one of those days where being reflective has made me realize how narrow and isolated my sense of “normal” is, and how much more successful I’ll be with others if I make the effort to understand the other guy rather than waiting for or trying to get him to understand me. I know that if I don’t make the effort to recognize and appreciate something outside of my comfort zone, I probably won’t understand or accept it.

The most challenging part of attempting to understand something new may be the move into the Learning Zone, where you, perforce, are pretty naked. This zone is uncomfortable and requires you to be hesitant and unsure of yourself, as you should be when learning something new. But who wants to do that? Who enjoys being humble and sincere enough to admit you don’t get it but want to and are willing to try? I’m afraid the older we get, the less willing we are to step outside of what we know and face the far, far greater world of what we don’t know – even if that step would lead to a better understanding of people we see and interact with every single day.

These are my thoughts this evening, as I sit in my window seat with the few others squarely in my comfort zone car on the Baby Boomer Express – peering out my window at the other cars of my train and at the other generational and cultural trains with their own cars, all of us hurtling into the unknown. I find this a little frightening, strangely comforting, and above all utterly, utterly amazing.

How about you? Ever look around and realize the world is bigger than you thought? Let’s talk about it on the message board, or email me direct at mmtym@detroitbuzz.com. All responses welcome.

Until then, heed our weekly Words of Wisdom:

To be uncertain is uncomfortable, but to be certain is ridiculous.

- Chinese proverb