few weeks ago, I was looking through old family photographs with my mother. There they were, frozen in time: weddings from the 1980s and 1990s. Young couples sat stiffly beside each other, looking vaguely terrified, surrounded by enough flowers to stock a nursery. Even the dulha was shy and didn’t dare raise his eyes. Some had met only a handful of times before getting married. Some barely knew each other at all and just winged it on the first meet-up at baraat.

And yet many of those couples are still together.

Whenever younger people point this out, older relatives usually respond with a mixture of amusement and annoyance. “Nowadays, you people think too much.”

It is tempting to dismiss that as typical generational grumbling. Every generation believes the next one is overcomplicating life. But lately I’ve wondered whether older Pakistanis are observing something real, even if they are explaining it poorly.

Because when you look closely, the Pakistani dream has undergone a remarkable transformation in a few decades: the political dream, the economic dream, the personal one; the dream of what constitutes a good life.

For much of our parents’ generation, the answer was surprisingly straightforward. You found a decent spouse, raised children, earned enough to keep the household running, maintained family ties and tried to build a stable life. Nobody expected perfection. In fact, the entire system was built on the assumption that life would be imperfect. Marriage would require compromise, work would often be boring. You would carry disappointments but you would keep going. There was an eerie comfort in that simplicity.

Today, many urban Pakistanis seem to be looking for something entirely different. We do not simply want a spouse but a soul mate (pardon my cynicism). We do not simply want a job, we want purpose. We do not simply want a social circle, we want deep emotional connection with all our vulnerabilities out in the open.

We do not simply want stability, we want happiness; whatever that means.

And while all of those desires sound reasonable in isolation, together they have created expectations that previous generations rarely carried.

The result is a strange paradox. We have more freedom than our parents did, yet many of us seem less certain about what to do with it.

Take love. A generation ago, marriage often arrived before love. You were lucky if alongside it. Whether that was fair or unfair is a separate debate. But the institution carried enormous social support. Families were involved and expectations were clear.

Today, we approach relationships differently because we pick them apart before committing. We discuss attachment styles, emotional availability, boundaries, traumas, compatibility and communication patterns. We read books, take therapy, listen to podcasts. We are more emotionally literate than our parents were at our age. Yet many people I know have never felt more confused about relationships.

The irony is difficult to ignore. We have more ways to meet people than any generation before us. Yet loneliness has become one of the defining themes of urban life.

Money tells a similar story. When our parents’ generation discussed financial success, the image was usually tangible: a house, a car, good schools for the children, savings for emergencies; perhaps some gold tucked away for difficult times.

Today, people speak about passive income, separate (and hidden) bank accounts, multiple revenue streams and financial independence. The language itself sounds imported from podcasts and YouTube channels from the West. At the same time, many educated professionals earn more than their parents did at the same age and still feel financially insecure.

Part of that anxiety is real. Housing costs have become absurd. Inflation has made planning difficult. Economic uncertainty hangs over nearly every long-term decision. But another part comes from comparison as our parents compared themselves to neighbours at best, but we compare ourselves to the world. A family in Lahore once measured itself against other families in Lahore. Today that same family scrolls through carefully curated images of life in Toronto, Dubai, London and Melbourne.

Then of course, social media has done something remarkable. It has expanded our imagination while shrinking our sense of satisfaction. The lives we compare ourselves against are no longer real people but edited highlights. And boy, are highlights difficult to compete with!

This shift has changed our relationship with leisure as well. Growing up, many Pakistanis experienced recreation as something communal. Families gathered on rooftops during summer evenings. Cousins disappeared into cricket matches that lasted entire afternoons. Weddings became multi-day festivals. People visited one another without scheduling appointments weeks in advance. The entertainment itself was often secondary because the point was being together.

Today we have access to more entertainment than any previous generation could have imagined. Streaming platforms, gaming, social media, endless content available at all hours. Yet boredom remains a frequent complaint.

So does isolation... We have become extraordinarily skilled at consuming experiences and somewhat less skilled at sharing them. A person can spend an entire evening connected to hundreds of people online and still go to bed feeling alone.

Perhaps the biggest difference lies in how we think about ourselves.

Many people from older generations carried emotional burdens that remained largely invisible. They experienced grief, disappointment, loneliness and heartbreak just as intensely as we do. They simply lacked the language (and often the permission) to discuss those experiences openly.

Today’s generation talks about emotions constantly. Sometimes excessively? That’s an individual opinion.

Not every difficult parent is toxic. Not every former partner is a narcissist. Not every unpleasant experience becomes trauma.

But beneath the occasional tendency to over-analyse lies the beautiful, raw truth: people are trying to understand themselves.

A young woman asks whether she actually wants marriage or simply fears social judgment. A young man wonders whether the career he pursued was his own choice or an inherited expectation. Someone starts therapy and discovers they have spent years living according to a script they never consciously chose.

These are the concerns of a society that has moved from asking, “What should I do?” to asking, “What do I actually want?”That question turns out to be much harder.

Sometimes I think every generation envies something about the one before it. Older Pakistanis look at younger people and see freedom: freedom to choose partners, careers, lifestyles and identities that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago. Younger Pakistanis look at older generations and see certainty, blissful ignorance and a stronger sense of community.

Both perspectives contain some truth.

The old dream came with limitations that many people paid for quietly. Women abandoned ambition and men suppressed emotions. Countless individuals remained in situations that made them unhappy because there appeared to be no alternative.

The new dream is more flexible, more individual and arguably more humane. But it is also more demanding and more daunting. It asks us to design our own lives. To decide what love means and go against the tide if need be.

Perhaps that is why so many conversations between parents and children seem to circle the same frustrations. One generation cannot understand why the other appears perpetually dissatisfied. The other cannot understand how anyone managed to live without questioning everything.

To be candid, at this age I think neither side is wrong. They are simply responding to different worlds.

They spent much of their lives trying to secure a future they could count on; we spend ours trying to figure out what to do with the freedom they gave us.

Somewhere, an older relative is still wondering why we overthink everything. Somewhere, a younger Kiva is staring at a screen full of possibilities, wondering which life to choose.

Kiva Malick is an academician and a writer who focuses on education, philosophy, music and culture