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Generations have their own iconic touchstones - from songs to cultural references and political heroes (and anti-heroes).
Even if we share a generation, your touchstones will be different from mine, we've had different experiences, after all.
Given all the young people of Australia have experienced over the past year, wow, where do you start?
Who knows, but on so much of the evidence available right now, we're in a remarkably positive place - believe it or not!
Take little Sophie Milner. She's eight.
She found a simple but very special way to cope with all that is encompassing the world right now. She made dozens of 50 thank you cards for teachers at her school.
"I was with her when she was starting to hand the cards out and she was so excited to do that; and the teachers' reactions were just beautiful. They were so appreciative and happy about what Sophie had done," her mum Charlene Daines said.
And the love goes two ways. For instance, south of Wollongong, the motivation was "to spread kindness, not germs".
One school potted daffodils to send to aged-care facilities, another turned a drive-by into a special, heart-warming event.
Teachers and staff from Dapto Public School lined up (at an appropriate distance) and encouraged the parents whose kids are being schooled from home to drive by and just say g'day.
"What we really want is for kids to feel as connected as they can be," explained
"Though we have been working online and that has been a really good thing for us so far, this was just a way to have some visual contact with each other."
And remember back when bushfires gripped much of the nation by the throat, the kids, no doubt traumatised, kept it real - with kindness. There were cake stalls then, before the fires chocolatey generosity and since the fires, fundraising shaves.
There is much goodness to fill many hearts - if you let it.
There's also much to learn from millenials, take Andrea Cantle for one.
In a few short months she has stared down more catastrophe and heartbreak than many Australians have faced over a lifetime. These are her words: "Share positivity every way you can. Leave the (bad) news to the journalists."
Janine Graham,
ACM digital editor