Isn’t 60+ Something Your Parents Were?

Dunno about you, but I am noticing a change in the reflection in the mirror these days. I knew I was looking older when a young lady at a fast-food restaurant automatically keyed in SENIOR DISCOUNT when I ordered breakfast.

My goodness…

We are all growing older – and the struggles are as unique as our own thoughts and fingerprints.

Baby Boomers were never going to grow old. Remember that?

Well…some haven’t… They’re gone…never to have witnessed the coming of old age. They never had the chance – gone from this world before reaching old age. I think of high school friends killed in car accidents in our senior year – never to see graduation. At least one passed from terminal cancer before he was 20 – gone at such a very young age before reaching adulthood.

It can get depressing….but consider this… At 60+, you’re a survivor. You are still here.

If you’re 60+ and lamenting the arrival of old age, count your blessings. You are still alive. You are still here to feel and experience. You are still making a difference no matter how small. You have air in your lungs and a backache to boot. If you have people close by who love you, count your blessings even if they drive you crazy. If you don’t, mingle with others where there is the potential for friendship and love. Keep on keeping on. Never give up. You are still very much alive to feel both pain and – more importantly – pleasure.

When we were so very young, we saw the world differently than we do now. We’re not unlike the generations that have passed before us. Consider a saying for the ages, “I’ve been young and I’ve been old…and young was better…”

But, was it?

Consider how short on wisdom (stupid) you were at 20. Further consider your life experiences and what you’ve learned in the decades since. You’re a whole lot smarter than you were when Walter Cronkite was at the news desk and Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.

Further consider the prosperity path – the post-war world handed to us by The Greatest Generation as we crested adulthood. We’ve had it better than any generation before us. It has been what we’ve done with it since that has determined where we are now.

At the cusp of the 1970s, boomers repeatedly said, “Never trust anyone over 30…” I am snickering as I write this because there’s nothing new under the sun. Do you know who allegedly said this first? Jack Weinberg – born April 4, 1940 – is the first person to have reportedly said this. He was 24 at the time and was a young adult.

He’d never been old.

Today, he is 83.

Weinberg was an outspoken American environmental activist best known for his role in the “Free Speech Movement” at the University of California at Berkley in 1964. His immortal words have endured. Weinberg gets the credit for the phrase, “Don’t trust anyone over 30”. Of course, several outspoken activists have copped this phrase over the years. Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and a host of others have taken credit for it.

You can bet young people were uttering these timeless words in the 1800s. Through the ages, there have been generation gaps – none larger than Baby Boomers and The Greatest Generation. The Greatest Generation said, “Rock and Roll has got to go!” Boomers said, “Hell No, We Won’t Go!” We paved the way to a new age where the world was never going to be the same again.

Baby Boomers be damned, yet honored, for the changes that have come in our time. We were going to change the world – and did. We’ve done a lot of good. We’ve also done our share of not so good. We’ve been greedy and selfish. Our parents wanted the very best for us – to have it better than they did. As a generation, we’ve collectively never known hardship. Our parents lived through The Great Depression and a world war. They made sacrifices we’ve never had to make.

Of course, we are older and wiser today. We’ve been selfish and we’ve been innovative. We’ve made great contributions to society especially with civil rights and equal opportunity. We surely have our regrets – things we wish we’d done differently. It is important to remember if you can read these words, you remain very much alive to experience and to feel.

As we head into the twilight, it is a good idea to consider these words – “Life is experiential…” Take these months and years ahead and look at life as an adventure. Embrace it – and others – for we shall not pass this way again.