Enough with the Baby Boomers!
It’s Time to put away childish things.
We have outgrown the term Baby Boomers. It’s way past its sell-by date. All 73 million of us. We have to give it up and so do the demographers, the journalists, and the sociologists. There is nothing baby-ish about us anymore.
When your children and your grandchildren issue you terse directives to stay isolated, to protect your health by staying home. Because you are a senior and therefore vulnerable. When every news program details how susceptible we are because of our advanced age and failing immune systems. To be honest, we are old. Time to stop referring to our generation as Baby Boomers. We are now the adults in the room. Actually, that’s not even true, we are the Elders at the Table. Our children are now the adults. We have crossed over.
It’s time for us to grow up. To shake off the “baby” part. We were babies a long time ago. I worry that in some ways, being referred to collectively as “Baby Boomers has encouraged us to be life-long adolescents. A little selfish. Self-involved. Wearing clothes that are a little too young. Imagining at 50 that we are 30 and can begin again. Believing in our own power and entitlements. Believing in the ever-upward curve of our fortunes. There will be a cure for cancer. Science and medicine will fix it all. Or technology. A smart investment portfolio will secure our future and feather our children’s nests. We needn’t be worried. And don’t we all sort of buy into the Viagra vision of our future selves? Gracefully aging, a tinge of silver, a loving partner, a home on the metaphoric golf course. Or by the ocean. But for some of us, it is not to be. And for the rest of us, time to grow up and face our finite realities. Time to think some hard thoughts about providing for the next generation. They are still our children, albeit mature individuals in the prime of their lives. What will we bequeath to them?
I am a proud Baby Boomer. Born in the fat fist of the post-war boom. The last of three to be born. The last of three to still be alive and kicking. I feel young (gracias for hair dye!). I try to imagine I will master yoga and return to the suppleness of my 30’s and 40’s. I dream of all sorts of new possibilities, new challenges and successes beckoning. Maybe too late to finish Law School? But maybe I could write a movie script or a best-seller? Maybe learn to play the guitar or the saxophone? I look at RBG and Nancy Pelosi. I look at Anthony Fauci. Wow, they are all older than me by a decade and wow, they are leading the challenge. Is 80 plus the new 50? Or 60? And then I realize, they are not even “Baby Boomers”. They are not our role models. They are the outliers, extraordinary people as they have been at every age.
We are not just “Boomers” either. It won’t work just to drop the Baby. Ok Boomer! took care of that. So, who are we? We are now the Village Elders. We need to conduct ourselves with the gravity that the phrase conjures. There are over 70 million of us Village Elders in America. Think what we can do to if we leverage our gravitas and our wisdom. We can make things better. We have all the time in the world for that.