The Baby Boomer Blues<\/p>\n
We baby boomers are in a pickle. The constant look of\u00a0surprise on our faces is more than bad Botox. We\u00a0like getting senior discounts at the movie theater, but we\u2019re pissed off when the kid behind the counter doesn\u2019t look surprised. We finally can afford to buy\u00a0the expensive stiletto heels we always lusted after, but now our hips and feet\u00a0hurt like hell when we\u2019re wearing them. We love our iPhones but we\u2019re leery\u00a0about using FaceTime and Zoom because we think we look wizened on the screen. We\u2019r\u00a0annoyed when someone tells us we look great \u201cfor our age,\u201d wishing we could\u00a0turn back time and know as much as we know now.<\/p>\n
When we were young, my friends and I were\u00a0sure we would never get old and now it\u2019s devastating to wake up in the morning\u00a0with aches, pains, and wrinkles that weren\u2019t there before. So much has changed\u00a0that we never expected. We\u2019re stunned and disappointed when we look in the\u00a0mirror. Our sense of balance has become undependable. We search for words and\u00a0names that used to be at our fingertips. Our abilty to move around has become\u00a0all about spare parts. Titanium hips and knees. Shoulder replacements. Dental
crowns and implants. Glasses and hearing aids which, by the way, is unfair\u00a0since glasses are a fashion statement and hearing aids are shameful and designed\u00a0to be invisible. Is it better to have trouble seeing than being hard of\u00a0hearing?<\/p>\n
When I consider how my generation imagined\u00a0the future when we were in our twenties and compare it to the reality we now
face, it\u2019s a wonder any of us can function at all. We\u2019re suffering from a\u00a0strange epidemic that I call the Baby Boomer Blues:<\/p>\n
\u2022 When we were\u00a0young and carefree, we vowed never to trust anyone over thirty, and here we\u00a0are, in our sixties and seventies.<\/p>\n
\u2022 We can\u2019t explore\u00a0alterante realities by \u201cturning on, tuning in, and dropping out\u201d like we did\u00a0before, \u00e0 la Timothy Leary, because our bodies can\u2019t handle the drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2022 We used to\u00a0take LSD to uplift our moods and feel better about the world. Now we take\u00a0Prozac.<\/p>\n
\u2022 We judged\u00a0anyone who didn\u2019t have long hair, and today a lot of us are going bald.<\/p>\n
\u2022 We strove to\u00a0overcome racial prejudice and become \u201ccolor blind.\u201d Now we need glasses.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Women grew\u00a0the hair on our legs and underarms because we wanted to be \u201cnatural.\u201d Now we\u2019re\u00a0having it waxed and lasered off, all over our bodies and we\u2019re getting fillers,\u00a0plastic surgery and lying about our age.<\/p>\n
\u2022 We used to\u00a0live in communes with \u201cextended family.\u201d Now we isolate in private worlds, our\u00a0heads perpetually stuck in a maze of electronic devices.<\/p>\n
\u2022 We used to\u00a0fall in love by gazing into each other\u2019s eyes. Now we have online romances with
people we\u2019ve never met\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2022 We used to\u00a0measure our worth in being productive and getting things done. Now all we want\u00a0is to be quiet and find some peace.<\/p>\n
What the hell happened? Our revolutionary philosophies,
rituals and favorite toys like correcting selectric typewriters, answering\u00a0machines, and ice cube trays are falling under the categories of \u201cquaint\u201d and\u00a0\u201coutdated.\u201d Everything has changed as we realize that we have more time behind\u00a0us than ahead of us. It seems that what we thought and what we got are\u00a0diametrically opposed. It feels like time is speeding up. Athletes best each\u00a0other by one one-hundredths of a second and unless you\u2019re a rocket scientist,
forget about helping your kid do their math homework.<\/p>\n
The only way I cope is to turn to something\u00a0I learned when I was coming of age: Stay in the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe Here Now,\u201d\u00a0the title of a spiritual book that the late Baba Ram Das published in 1971, was\u00a0stunning in its simplicity. He suggests that we can only find peace when we stop\u00a0projecting into the future or the past and be present for each moment as it\u00a0unfolds. The book sold upwards of three million copies, it was considered the
counterculture bible and an antidote for our fear of aging and suffering. The\u00a0Buddist-inspired expression, \u201cbe mindful,\u201d refers to the same kind of\u00a0consciousness. It\u2019s about facing the unavoidable changes in our lives with\u00a0grace and compassion for ourselves. Not running away or distracting but facing\u00a0our fears and figuring out how to be with them.<\/p>\n
The way we deal\u00a0with these things in the West is so different from how they view them in the\u00a0East. The elderly are revered in the East and reviled here in the West. In our world\u00a0where youth is celebrated and aging is dreaded, it\u2019s no wonder we have such a\u00a0hard time embracing our sags and wrinkles. I resent that society considers my
wrinkles and lines unsightly and expects me to hide them so no one will know\u00a0how old I am. Instead of seventy being the new sixty, why can\u2019t seventy just be\u00a0seventy?<\/p>\n
But however we feel\u00a0about aging, the time will come when all of us baby boomers have left the\u00a0building. We have no idea what we cone next or if we actually go anywhere. We\u00a0hope that traces of how we spoke, felt and smelled will live on in our loved\u00a0one\u2019s minds. We ask ourselves, Who do we love? Have we told them? What do we
want to leave behind? These are the things we contemplate, the questions\u00a0without answers, as we blindly move forward along the path to the inevitable.\u00a0As I get older and more contemplative, as I feel like I know less, no more\u00a0than I did before, I hope that when I die, people will say, \u201cShe didn’t have\u00a0any answers but she sure had some great questions.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The Baby Boomer Blues We baby boomers are in a pickle. The constant look of\u00a0surprise on our faces is more than bad Botox. We\u00a0like getting senior discounts at the movie theater, but we\u2019re pissed off when the kid behind the counter doesn\u2019t look surprised. We finally can afford to buy\u00a0the expensive stiletto heels we always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2374,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions\/2374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}