We baby boomers are in a pickle. We love our electronic devices but they cause us major angst because we weren’t born with an iPad in our hands. I call us the “in- betweeners,” late to the party and a little bit slow on the uptake when it comes to technological savvy. And then, when we finally figure it out, we’re leery about using Facetime and Zoom because we think we look wizened on the screen. When we were in our twenties, we vowed to never get old and we actually
believed that was possible. Now, there are many millions of us in our
seventies, we have aches and pains we’re not prepared for, and the constant look of surprise on our faces is more than bad Botox.
A part of me is stunned to be aging, as if it were a bad choice I made. I’m suffering from a strange epidemic that I call “the Baby Boomer Blues,” a disappointment about how things turned out. About how we turned out. About where we’re headed. But when you compare what we expected with what we actually got, it’s a wonder
any of us can function at all:
# When we were young and carefree, we vowed never to trust anyone over thirty. Here we are, in our sixties and seventies.
• We judged anyone who didn’t have long hair. Today a lot of us are going bald.
• We used to take LSD and psylocibin mushrooms to uplift our moods and feel better about our world. Now we take Prozac and Xanax.
• We touted psychedelics as mind expanding. Now we do everything we can to stop our grand children from using them.
• We women grew the hair under our arms and on our legs because we wanted to be “natural.” Now we’re having it waxed and lasered off, all over our bodies.
• We used to live in communes with friends whom we called extended family. Now we isolate in private rooms with our heads perpetually stuck in our electronic devices.
• We used to drop by unannounced to visit the people we loved. Now we text each other to make an appointment to talk on the phone.
• We used to fall in love by gazing into each other’s eyes. Now we have technological romances with people we’ve never met.
I used to believe that if I was a good person and treated other people with kindness, I’d have peace and love and everything would be alright. I’d get my happily ever after. But that isn’t the way it goes. Bad things happen to good people and I have to learn to accept what is right here, right now and manage it as best I can.
According to Buddhist teachings, the first Noble Truth” is the acknowledgment that there is suffering in the world. We distract ourselves from it by chasing excitement and instant gratification, but when we slow down and stop running, we see that our suffering is still there, waiting for us. We’re slowly discovering that the only way out of it is to adopt “the Middle Way,” the path between the extremes
of highs and lows. This creates a predicament because the idea of accepting suffering as a reality, causes me suffering. And the only method of deliverance seems to be the arduous task of practicing constant awareness and mindfulness. I keep on trying.
Back in the day, most of us meant well. We cared about the world and we rejected and redefined traditional values with activism, social change and freedom from a rigid past. We wanted to make a difference and leave our world a little bit better than when we got here. We believed in the American Dream and we were
willing to work hard to achieve it. We focused on personal growth and when someone passed away, we celebrated their life with a memorial service instead of wearing black at a funeral. We immersed ourselves in creating beauty and we believed that everything and anything was possible.
No matter how we lived and what we believed, in the words of rock and roll idol and poet, Jim Morrison, “No one gets out of here alive.” Whether it happens with a loud bang or a dull thud, whether we go out like a lion or a lamb, the time will come when all of us boomers have left the building. While society will define our treasured objects like typewriters, answering machines and ice cube trays as “quaint,” I hope that our philosophies and rituals will be seen as meaningful and worth hanging onto. It would be nice to be remembered for
leaving behind something that matters, for bringing light into a world gone mad. That’s how it looks to me, but maybe it was always this way. Maybe planet earth has always been a battlefield and our job has always been to embrace our small piece of the puzzle and leave an impression that will bring a smile to a loved one’s face and help them navigate the choppy waters after we step off the boat.
In my years of seeking truth and compassion, I’ve come to understand that after I’m gone, I’ll have no control over how people remember me and what mattered to me. I can only hope that when I’m no longer here, people will think or a moment and say, “She didn’t have any answers but she sure had some interesting
questions.”
Recent Comments