Wake Up Boomers!

I put on the blouse that had been adorable when I’d bought it, but now it was baggy and faded. “You’ve lost your cuteness factor!” I said by way of apology as I took it off and placed it in a pile of clothes to give away. Then I looked up and caught my own reflection in the mirror. “You’ve lost your cuteness factor, too. You were cute when I got you, but now you’re fading.” I realized I couldn’t give me away, though. Had to make peace with the reality of change.

We all come in with a cuteness factor and then as time goes by, we begin to fade just as plants and animals do after full bloom. It’s a hard thing to reconcile, especially for those of us born in the Baby Boom years. We had the world by the tail and our slogan was “Don’t trust anybody over 30!” HA! The chickens came home to roost as we left 30 and now enter the geezer years – way beyond 30.

For the early Boomers, an identity crisis has been brewing since we hit the magic marker of 30 way back when. Slowly, the noisy voices of idealism got quieter. Those of us who were the Flower Power generation of the 60s became the yuppies of the 70s and then sort of faded away as Reaganomics took over in the 80s and the dot.com revolution exploded in the 90s. We watched as the world changed at a dizzying pace, leaving us a bit perplexed, and held back because we no longer felt relevant.

Our children thought our generation was lazy and “me” oriented. They were right to a point about the “me” part – but we weren’t and aren’t lazy. Idealistic, yes. Misguided at times, perhaps. But the generation that defined protests and did a lot to make way for a world of free flowing ideas and human/women’s rights still has a lot to share. We’ve just been quiet. Waiting. Observing. Pondering. Confused. If we’re way over 30, can anything we have to share be relevant or of value?

It’s time Boomers. We are marching into the elder years and have to redefine what that means so that we don’t fade away in obscurity. We’re not made of shallow stuff. We have voices that need to be heard. What have we learned in the intervening years between the time when we were the predominant generation to this point in our lives, and how can we best bring these voices forward to contribute to the knowledge base and wellbeing of our grandchildren’s future? How can we redefine older age so that people are no longer thrown away, forgotten, or trivialized? If anyone will do it – it’s going to be us.

I’m not talking about cheating age. You can only do botox and have so many face and body lifts before gravity overcomes. We don’t have to chase after a youth that we’ve already had, but search the content of our interior world to see what we’ve become. What richness is lurking inside? What has mulched through the years waiting for us to pluck the gifts of living in a way that makes us valuable and validating.

It’s time. We need to rise to the occasion and make our presence known. We have to overcome the dilemma and amazement that we’ve actually become elders. We need to shake off the notions that older means dumb and dumber or useless and outworn. We aren’t. My blouse might have lost its cuteness factor, but I actually haven’t. It’s just a different type of “cute”….perhaps acute! So, I’m calling to us. Let’s wake up and find a collective voice to stir ourselves again – to protest obscurity and being cast offs, or of casting ourselves away. Its’ time to wake up and speak up with acuity…..again!

KJ