It Sucks Getting Old…
The Baby Boomer generation is getting older.
For a long time the world was ours.
We changed history… we stopped wars… and the world as we knew it…well, we shaped it to what we wanted.
We demonstrated… we marched…some of us went to war and others grew up and “became our parents.”
I remember the Beatles and how all the males tried to imitate the hairstyles…and I remember watching television when they had the draft lottery on television…
I remember Woodstock…and while I didn’t go, some of my friends did. And they still talk about it. It will never be repeated.
I remember being young and thinking I would never die or grow old.
And I remember when the first person that I knew that died in Vietnam.
And I remember the horror stories that my friends told when they returned. And many of them never recovered.
And eventually we all settled down, because we were growing up… and becoming the “adults” our parents were and the new generation that we had always criticized.
But it is so damn different now.
A lot of us had boring lives… and a lot of us had secret, exciting lives that we never talked about either.
But the 60s and 70s shaped us.
And most of us spent a long time trying to change things and even rebelling against things we didn’t like. And a lot of us swore that we would never be like our parents and we would “take chances” and “do as we pleased.”
But now we’re old. Or at least “older”.
And we have aches and pains now…the same ones that our parents had.
And we worry about surviving the next 10, 20 or even 30 years… because most of us didn’t save much money… and we’re scared that the government won’t be able to take care of us. Even though this is the same government that we demonstrated again and criticized.
And we don’t like what is happening in the world.
We used to talk about “love” and “peace”.
And there isn’t much talk of what anymore.
So at lot of us have retreated into ourselves and we are just trying to survive.
And it sucks because…inside…we’re still the same people from half a century ago.
I don’t know of many people that like getting old. And know even fewer that really embrace it.
I know that my sister and her husband saved money, paid off their mortgage early, and invested wisely. But they’re in the minority.
And there’s a lot of talk of “tougher times” ahead. The nightly news is negative and every broadcast seems to carry news of another shooting or terrorist report of some kind.
It’s depressing.
And honestly, I don’t see anyone standing up and demonstrating like we used to do.
That is REALLY depressing.
Can my generation still effect change?
Why not?
We have all seen people change and we have seen people reinvent themselves. And it’s exciting to watch.
Yeah getting old sucks… but it doesn’t have to.
We changed the world once…
Why the hell can’t we do it again?