Quest for Meaning, Millennial Edition Re "Millennial Searchers," by Emily Esfahani Smith and Jennifer L. Aaker (Sunday Review, Dec. 1): As a millennial born in 1991 who is serving a yearlong global health fellowship in rural Haiti, I read the article with bewilderment and fascination. What makes my generation so different from all prior generations and those still to come? Doesn't each generation struggle with balancing meaning and happiness, work and play, selfish interests and communal obligations? Compromises, false starts, mistakes and chased dreams are nothing new. We may move with our heads half-buried in our texts and smartphones, but we are all more alike than different. Relax, parents; we'll turn out O.K. I'd even wager that millennials won't be the last generation grappling with the question of life's meaning. SAMUEL WARE Thomassique, Haiti, Dec. 1, 2013 Millennials may have a higher calling, but some people may not have the patience to deal with their impatience. Millennials, also known as Generation Y, live in an amped-up, mobile and social-media-heavy world. They're very smart, tech savvy, highly collaborative and in some ways transparent. But many often don't want help. Offer it, and you'd better "wow" them in two or three seconds or get tuned out. Presenting an idea or help with subtlety sometimes works. Perhaps their style engine is simply their way of dealing with the older generation. Each generation has its ways. But reciprocity helps fuel positive, healthy and enduring relationships, both personal and business. Millennials themselves wouldn't put up with their behavior if it came from someone else. But let's give them a break; our parents gave us one. It is heartening to read that the millennial generation aspires to careers with a larger meaning rather than simply material success. But the tendency of the research mentioned in the article to equate meaningful work with explicitly altruistic goals reinforces a dichotomy that may undermine the very search for meaning. Equating what is meaningful with the goal of working for others in the service professions often leads us to overlook the deeply personal and self-interested side of such work, as if self-interest were something to be shelved, or shamefully shunned in the service of something higher. Equally, the implication that those with careers geared to material success are not potentially contributing powerfully to larger social ends can lead to a kind of moralistic scorn for those choices - and blindness to what and how those people may contribute. The human "search for meaning" is not limited to those who declare that they want to pursue something "meaningful." Beyond the surface, it entails a complex, often covert intertwining of both self-interested and altruistic goals and consequences. The writer is a psychoanalyst.