Boomer Journey…

No matter what you believe at Fifty-Something, how you view life in your Sixties will change significantly. It won’t happen overnight – but it will happen. I was born in the middle of the Baby Boom – 1956. By the time I was born, the first boomers were 10. By the time I reached 10, they were well on their way to adulthood and becoming the very generation they detested.

It’s easy to feel disoriented these days. We are all 60+ now. We’ve become the generation we didn’t trust at 25. Remember that? Never trust anyone over 30. Didn’t we say that a lifetime ago? And, consider this… The eldest of the boomers are cresting 80.

How’s that for sobering?

And – like the generation before us, we do not understand the generation behind us. They don’t understand us either. In fact, they cannot stand us – wishing boomers would shut the hell up.

Yet…they love our music.

My 16 year-old son, GEN Z I believe they call it, plays our music while he is showering. I can hear it through the floor. Sometimes, he plays our music on his clarinet and sax. Our music has endured – yet our legacy of change has not. We have a lot to answer for.

Feeling disoriented?

Of course…

It’s the same old saw. It is Generation Gap 2.0 and we are living it now. I don’t believe today’s generation gap is as wide as the one we had with our parents. The Generation Gap of the mid-20th century was significant and the world that came before us was quite conservative. Perhaps a little too conservative and not ready for our rewrite of the world. We were born into a generation that was never going to understand us. Seems the gap arrived with Rock & Roll. It was very controversial.

Why?

Because we were so very different and decided we’d be different and make no apologies for it. It was the oppressiveness of our parents’ generation that inspired us to rise. Sex has always been the 800-pound gorilla in the living room no one talked about. Seems everyone – including our parents and teachers – thought about it or we wouldn’t be here.

The Greatest Generation believed rock and roll, as one example, was too promiscuous. It was “dirty” and unacceptable. Beneath the surface, they envied it. As one journalist recently put it, “Sexual Suggestiveness: The rhythmic, energetic nature of rock and roll music was seen as sexually suggestive, especially the way artists like Elvis Presley would move their hips while performing. This was considered inappropriate and immoral, especially for young audiences.”

You mean The Greatest Generation never thought about sex?

Nah…it just wasn’t discussed.

It was also said, “Association with African-American Culture: Much of the early rock and roll music was influenced by African-American musical styles like rhythm and blues, which were not widely accepted in mainstream white culture at the time. There was a racial stigma attached to this association.” Our racist culture was right out in the open for everyone to see. It never left.

They went on to say “Perceived Threat to Traditional Values: The raw, rebellious nature of rock and roll was seen as a threat to traditional values and social norms, especially among older, more conservative members of society. The music was viewed as encouraging juvenile delinquency and challenging established social order.”

I suppose it was. We’ve never been the same since.

Thank Goodness…

Rock and Roll was considered a morale sickness. It was seen as a terrible sociological illness that was corrupting the nation’s youth – which could lead to immoral behavior. Perhaps we’ve taken it a bit too far the other way. Watch “NYPD Blue” reruns and tell me I am mistaken.

Baby Boomers changed the world and our conservative culture. The irony is, as baby boomers have advanced into senior citizens, we’ve become more conservative. Ironic considering the way we changed the world some five decades ago, and in the years since. Stay tuned, there’s plenty of change yet to come.

If you are like most of us, you’re getting invitations to class reunions. Question is – what to do with those invitations a half century later? If you were born before 1955, you’ve already experienced the trauma and bewilderment of your 50th reunion and not knowing who anyone is.

The last class reunion I attended was my 10th in 1985. I would walk around Bowie Senior High’s Class of 1975 (Bowie, Maryland) and recognize most of my classmates. We were still young and quite identifiable. No one had to glance at a name tag. My reunion included a formal dinner at the Capital Centre (gone now) and a picnic the next day at Allen Pond Park in a more relaxed atmosphere with families and friends, which included the same cliques who hung out together in high school who also hung out together at the park a decade later.

That was 40 years ago.

There were the elitists of my graduating class – the cheerleaders and super jocks who didn’t have time for the rest of us. And then – there were the rest of us – the “untouchables” who hung out together in a different world entirely.

Ironically, most of the “in-crowd” at my high school never made headlines after graduation. At least I haven’t seen evidence of it. They don’t even come up on our radar a lifetime later because we are all living in different worlds. At times, I can’t even remember their names.

There were the “seldom seen” dork types like me who lacked self-confidence, were uncool, whose mothers dressed us who came of age and vanished from the area. We moved on. A lot of us in the huddled masses wanted more for our lives. It took a while for some of us. We’ve raised our kids and grandkids, enjoyed fruitful careers, and have something to show for it as we enter retirement. Not all of us did. A lot of us fell into hard times with failing health, financial woes, or loss of a loved one.

And consider this – quite a few aren’t here anymore to complain about aches and pains – a reminder to stop complaining and start living. You’re not dead yet.

I believe the “in-crowd” didn’t know what do after graduation. They were “on top” in high school, very popular, yet were completely lost after graduation when no one was watching anymore. They just didn’t know what to do. Some stories are rather tragic where some got into drugs or alcoholism, got into trouble with the law, or just never went any further with their lives.

There are also the success stories – those who landed on top and have achieved greatness in their adult lives. Kathy Lee Gifford is one such success story from my high school. She was Class of 1971 and graduated with my sister. When she and Rick Sellers were on the Bowie Senior High stage performing the musical “South Pacific,” we felt they were going somewhere because they were very good at their craft. No idea where Rick is today but most of us understand what Kathy became – quite visible in television for decades now. She was a cohost of NBC’s “Today” show and became an integral part of the respected NBC News fraternity.

There is also Abby Phillip, a Bowie High graduate who hosts NewsNight with Abby Phillip on CNN and has made quite a name for herself as a Washington reporter and news anchor.

If ever you’ve attended a class reunion, you understand the bewildering nature of seeing people you hung out with in high school whom you do not recognize today. The generation that didn’t trust anyone over 30 is now in its sixties and seventies. Genetics is the darnedest thing. Some of us have aged very well and are clearly recognizable. Others of us suffer from wrinkles, gray hair, crow’s feet, and the rest of it. This is when it becomes, “Who did you say you were again?”

Whether or not you attend your class reunion is a personal decision. If you’re like me, you have very little in common with your classmates though you spent every day together before graduation. You learn quickly you’ve been 18 and you are sixty-something and 18 was a long time ago.

As boomers cruise into the twilight, we find ourselves longing for the place where we grew up and came of age. Some of us never left “back home” while others of us have moved far and wide. I am an East Coast boy who grew up in the Washington, D.C. area in Maryland and Virginia. I was born in Northwest D.C., which makes me a native Washingtonian. My family history in Washington goes back generations to an organization known as “The Oldest Inhabitants of the District.”

I’ve called Arlington and Fairfax counties in Virginia home as well as Prince George’s and Wicomico counties in Maryland. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for over 30 years – yet Southern California has never really been home for me. It is just too different for me. You can take the East Coast boy out of the East Coast yet you will never take the East Coast out of the boy.

I never observed anything normal about Los Angeles much less the California surrounding it. This isn’t a criticism, but more an observation. It is very different from my native mid-Atlantic. If you desire a perfect climate and incredible destinations within driving distance, then California is the place to be.

I have lived all over these United States – Florida, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, and Michigan in an effort to land in a more permanent spot to call home. I suppose I found that “spot” in suburban Los Angeles on the high desert some 60 miles north of this vast metropolis. Los Angeles was never really in the plan because my most favorite place in the world is the American heartland. Career brought me to Big L.A. in the early 1990s and I never left. Los Angeles is something of a “Hotel California” where you can check in, but you can never leave. Los Angeles is a huge vacuum that sucks you in and the next thing you know, you’ve been here for three decades.

Maybe your story is similar to my own. I live a continent away from where I grew up. I’ve spoken with those of you who’ve moved a half a world away in places like Australia and New Zealand, or Brazil, South Africa, or Europe. I have a friend who moved to France right after high school and never returned. He loves it there.

My classmates are all over the globe.

It is true you can never go home again because “home” is just never the same. I have returned to the D.C. area dozens of times in the past 45 years. Landing at Baltimore’s BWI Airport is like seeing an old friend again whenever the wheels grease the runway. About 26 miles south of BWI is my hometown of Bowie, Maryland at the juncture of U.S. Route 50 and Maryland’s Route 3/301.

Every time I’ve come home to Maryland, it is so very familiar, and yet so different from what it was growing up in the 1960s. What was once very rural meadowland is developed and populated. My old haunts are either gone or so very different from what they were a half century ago. A good rule to follow is when you suffer from wanderlust to back to where you came from, take heart in knowing it won’t be the same and adapt to what it is now. Next thing you know, it will be like you never left.

The recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump is a reminder of our long-standing history of assassinations and assassination attempts. What happened on a sunny afternoon in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13th is a reminder of the unpredictable nature of human behavior.

The alleged shooter was a young man – 20 – and a registered Republican. Go figure. A reminder of the unpredictable nature of the human mind. It remains to be seen what will be learned next.

In the decades since the two Kennedy assassinations as well as Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968, there have been failed assassination attempts. July 13th was a little too close for comfort. Donald Trump dodged death by one inch. Had he not turned his head, he would have been assassinated – which would have been an enormous tragedy for the nation and one for the history books.

Another miserable scar in our 248-year history.

For the record, I am a centrist – both conservative and liberal. I think what happened to former President Trump was a near miss. Too close for comfort. I also believe we each need the freedom of be who we are regardless of what others believe. If you are gay/lesbian, be who you are and make no apologies for it. Live the life you want to live. Conservative? Liberal? I don’t care. Believe as you wish to believe as long as you don’t harm others. And, for the record, I am not happy with either candidate. We need and should expect better.

What happened on a Saturday afternoon in the heart of Pennsylvania is a reminder of how dangerous the world has always been. Safety is an illusion. We are sailing through a vast cosmos at mind-boggling speed. We’re never in the same place from one second to the next. We orbit the sun. Our solar system sails through the galaxy. Our galaxy is always on the move.

Safety is but an illusion.

Human nature is the want for absolute safety. We’re taught to believe this from the time we are very young. We want absolute safety – yet we will never have it – not in life and not even in our own bodies. We are soft tissue creatures – vulnerable to the elements. Nowhere is this more true than in automobiles. Air bags, crush zones, seat belts, side impact protection – yet a sudden stop at 80 mph is still a sudden stop. Our aorta bursts, soft tissue ruptures, organs cease to function – and life ends.

Know what I believe? All will be well in any case. Our ride on this planet is a passing journey no matter how much we want to believe life will never end. Because each and every one of us eventually dies – how bad can it be?

Remember…All will be well…

Life is a matter of what we call fate. “Well….it just wasn’t his time…” Maybe… The physical world has its share of risks – more than we wish to acknowledge. As has often been said, you won’t get off this apple alive. No truer words have been said.

Back to the subject of assassinations and attempts. No matter how much security and recon’ we put into and expect from government and law enforcement, there will be killings and attempted killings. Always someone out there a little smarter than law enforcement. Pennsylvania is a reminder of how dangerous the world is and will always be. The Secret Service did its best to protect Donald Trump. However, it appears the bullets intended for Trump killed one spectator and wounded two others. It remains to be seen how the Secret Service missed a young man on a rooftop. There are questions to be answered and lessons to be learned.

We remain a work in progress in The Great Society.

Have you noticed a change in the landscape of America’s youth? Video games. Cell phones. Laptops. E-Zombies. “What?” “You talkin’ to me?” “In a minute,,,”

Used to be you could find your teenage son under the hood of a car or your daughter in front of a makeup mirror or gossiping on a Princess phone. A lot has changed in 50 years. When I was 15, I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license and that first car. It was everything to me to have my new-found freedom. My first car wasn’t much to talk about. It was an Earl Scheib Green 1960 Valiant sedan my mother’s hairdresser gave to me as a gesture of kindness. I learned about how to work on cars tinkering with that little Valiant with its slant six engine and push button transmission. It had its share of mechanical problems. Bad brakes. Transmission woes. An interior that was coming apart. And – a 16 year-old who didn’t have a penny to his name living in hard times on minimum wage.

When the transmission finally gave out in that old Valiant, my father decided it wasn’t worth the expense to get it fixed and had it hauled off to the junk yard. He clearly didn’t understand what the car meant to me nor did he care. He was a product of the Great Depression and didn’t see the point of pouring money into “that old piece of junk…” and that was the end of the discussion.

That’s me, age 16, in the summer of 1972 in my first car – a 1960 Valiant sedan.

When I think of my youth, and the lives of so many of us at that time, I think we were a cruising generation with a whole lot of wanderlust – and perhaps the last to live it. Back home where I grew up in the mid-Atlantic, “cruising the drag” was a way of life. We’d collect at any number of shopping center parking lots and a couple of local parks, swap lies, and compare engine compartments. It was all about who had the nicest ride – or the fastest. There were always the chosen few with new Chevelle muscle cars and fun in the sun convertibles. I wasn’t one of those.

The Valiant generated its share of laughs. However, it would soon be gone. However, my passion for automobiles turned into a career as an automotive journalist spanning more than 40 years. I cultivated an interest in Ford’s sporty Mustang at a young age and became something of a respected Ford historian. It is what I’ve been doing most of my life. I still have my mother’s 1967 Mustang hardtop given to me back in the mid-1970s. I also have a 1961 Plymouth Valiant that came of something of a mid-life crisis and the desire to relive my youth. It was a garage-kept Minnesota car with 38,000 original miles originally purchased new by an elderly lady more than six decades ago.

I am surely of my generation – the first post-war generation that grew up with automobiles where cruising the drag and showing off became a way of life and remains such well into old age. There remains the popular cruising spots in every community and especially in small towns where us old blue hairs gather to relive our memories. Let us never lose this popular pastime.

That said, take heart, relive the youth, and let’s go cruisin’…

Can anyone explain to me why we’ve become such a hypersensitive society of chronic crybabies? Political correctness is on steroids – with everyone getting their noses jacked out of joint over virtually everything.

We’ve become a society of professional victims.

Think of all the things that have become banned because they offend certain segments of the population. Television programs banned because they offend people. Even the heart felt “A Charlie Brown Christmas” Peanuts holiday special where some want to eliminate Linus’ “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown…” speech that still brings the masses to tears nearly 60 years later. How ridiculous is this?! The name of this holiday special is “A Charlie Brown Christmas…” and there are those who want to ban this speech. Go bury your head in a pillow and turn the TV off. I was 9 years old when Charlie Brown originally aired, and it remains a “feel good” special to see on the holidays. Don’t you dare even mess with it.

Things have become so ridiculous to where Tinker Bell has been virtually banned by the Disney company. Since when did a make-believe cartoon character become offensive enough to be banned? What next? Banning Mickey Mouse because he offends rodent lovers? Walt Disney is spinning in his grave. The Wonderful World of Disney – the magic – should never waver. Why? Because children aren’t offended by Tinker Bell nor any other Disney character. The is neurotic adulthood nuttiness. The magic of Disney is all about children now isn’t it? Leave it to attention starved adults, who need to grow up, to be offended. Idiotic adults with an axe to grind. Nosy, busy body “Karens” with nothing better to do.

Go mind your own business and leave the rest of us alone.

How many of us have laughed hysterically at the antics of Ernest T. Bass (actor Howard Morris) in Andy Griffith? Andy Griffith poked fun and humor at rural life and the interesting characters who popped up throughout this classic comedy. The Darlings. Floyd the barber. Barney. The fun girls from Mount Pilot. In those days, America knew how to laugh at itself and our many cultures. You didn’t hear Appalachia getting bent out of shape, demanding it be banned from television.

I think we need to reach down deep inside and find the sense of humor we used to have – the keen ability to laugh at ourselves and enjoy living.

Dunno ’bout you, but I’ve found it is easier to be all alone than to be alone with a room full of electronics junkies. You see them everywhere – E-Zombies mindlessly staring into cell phones and laptops – hyper focused on a whole lot of nothing if you ask me. I’m talking people – friends, family, and other forms of human protoplasm you sit in a room with who just cannot put their electronic devices down long enough to strike up a conversation.

They just cannot be bothered.

In fact, it has arrived at a point where I believe you could yell “fire!” and that still wouldn’t distract them from their devices. It is like you aren’t even there. I’ve explained to family why it is offensive to me only to receive endless justification and denial. They don’t understand what all the concern is about. It becomes bitter and unpleasant at times. That’s how sick and addictive we’ve become.

E-Zombies don’t like distraction.

We’ve become so addicted to our cell phones to where blind panic sets in whenever we cannot find them. It’s like a pacifier a baby loses out of a crib. Makes them crazy. Our entire lives have become wrapped up in handheld devices. And – if we’re wrapped up in social media venues like Facebook or X, it is upsetting to us when we don’t get a prompt response or a “Like” right away. I’ve had people text me in less than five minutes with “Where are you?!”

Are you kidding me?

I am a cell phone/social media addict too. So much time is spent in social media, news and gossip that nothing gets done. Oil changes get missed. The house becomes one hot mess. A friend moves away or dies, and it goes unnoticed. Assignments and important appointments get missed. I become so engrossed I forget to go to the bathroom until bladder discomfort becomes unbearable.

To be honest with you, I’ve become…well…just done with it. If you’re paying attention to the world around you, you begin to see life spiraling out of control because so much has been missed. The house becomes a wreck and the refrigerator becomes bare. This is warped behavior. I sit here in the dawn’s early light of a Saturday morning wondering of the consequences of the neglect caused by the intense and narrow focus of being an E-Zombie.

How many friendships are lost from this reality disconnect? What the divorce rate of E-Zombies? How long is it before it is noticed a buddy walked away or a marital partner because so disenchanted they just quietly walked away and left a note? Scratch the note idea – you’d better text them because they will never see the note.

Courtesy NYPD

There has been a lot of chatter in recent times about “Law and Order,” but darned if I see where we are practicing it to any degree. Morale in the nation’s law enforcement has never been lower and do you know why? Because law enforcement isn’t society’s priority anymore. Defund the police. Demonizing the Police in the media. Never painting a good picture of law enforcement when there is so much good going on among the ranks. Is this how we treat those who protect us?

Well, what about that?

Do you remember when we were being taught the importance of obeying the rules in school? “Single File, Children, Single File…” and keeping your mouth shut in class – not that I ever practiced that. I spent a lot of time in the hallway. Being taught the rules and the enforcement of rules as children was all about preparing us to be responsible civilized adults who would obey the law.

In elementary school, we were introduced to “Officer Bob” the Policeman. We were taught to understand what Officer Bob did and why it was important to do exactly what he told us to do. What we didn’t know as children was just how dangerous Officer Bob’s job was.

Life has become decidedly more dangerous for law enforcement in recent times. Seems few even care. The Police have been getting a bad rap from the media and from society. It has become so bad citizens have become emboldened enough to argue with and even threaten police officers. Officers are being ambushed and murdered gang style even in rural areas.

Why would anyone want to be a cop?

Those enlisted to protect us are getting killed in never-before-seen numbers. I will never condone police brutality – however, I am all for old school police work. What does that mean? It means obey the orders of a police officer or suffer immediate consequences – and we all know what those consequences are. If you don’t obey the orders of a police officer, prepare to be arrested and sit in a jail cell. The streets were safer when there was some level of fear of the Police known as respect. We understood the importance of doing exactly as instructed. We still should.

Law enforcement commands our respect because it has certainly earned it. Why? Because these brave and committed men and women put their lives on the line 24/7/365 for all of us. They’re at the ready around the clock – there every day to maintain order in the community. Order is what keeps the community safe. Got that?

Consider what this means for you.

It means you can call the police at 3 a.m. when you’re in trouble and be able to depend on immediate help. Where I live in Southern California is protected only by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, they’re so understaffed to where you’re not even sure the police are coming in an emergency. Consider what that means in a home invasion robbery. You want to know the police will be on the block in a matter of minutes when you call.

I will always stand with the Police because they see the very worst of society and come face-to-face with the absolute worst human beings on Earth. The get badly injured, beaten severely, and lose their lives while keeping us safe. Nothing else to think about there.

They show up.

They stand the watch.

Every time a law enforcement officer dies in the line of duty, a lot of us die with them.

We must always stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

Courtesy NYPD

It is not difficult to stand with the Police. Whenever I see a cop, be it through car windows or passing them on the sidewalk, I always render kind words and a smile. They need it. Years back, I was in the Carpool Lane on the freeway during Carpool hours. Wasn’t paying attention to the time. The CHP pulled me over and said, “Solo in the Carpool Lane…” and he kept repeating himself expecting an argument from me. I explained that I understood and accepted the consequences.

Courtesy NYPD

Have you ever noticed how social trends change as new decades unfold? The Hippie Movement of the 1960s became the “Hangover Movement” of the 1970s. All that free love and “we don’t need money…baby…we got love…” rhetoric of the 1960s became the cold reality of the 1970s. No cash in your pocket meant starvation and a park bench. Free Love became Love Child. It also became sexually transmitted disease for some. We learned the party would not last forever. It had to end.

Despite our love of all things LOVE, we learned love didn’t pay the bills and put food on the table. It didn’t end the wars either. We’d find free love wasn’t free at all. With it came responsibility and emotional issues from which we couldn’t escape. The coming of the 1970s was something of a reality check in terms of responsibility when we were forced to become adults. Some of us never grew up – or became exactly what we detested – The Establishment.

Our maturity didn’t happen overnight, but instead in baby steps as our income and stature in the community grew. We found nothing in life is free – someone always pays. We also discovered real money wasn’t so bad after all. It got us all those things we wanted. The hippies of the 1960s became the yuppies – upwardly mobile, mocha-sipping doctors, lawyers, dentists, psychologists, business executives, day traders, real estate developers, politicians, and a whole lot of widespread narcissistic self-absorption. We believed it was all about us.

We had met the enemy – and the enemy was what we became.

According to those with vast knowledge of the subject, the hippies were a sociological group of primarily young people, now elderly, were associated with the enormous counterculture movement of the 1960s – launched here in the United States. We ditched the suit and tie and donned tie-dyed tee shirts and worn-out jeans. The hippie movement spread like wildfire across the globe.

The hippie movement fueled the Generation Gap.

Wikipedia tells us the word “hippie” evolved from the word “hipster” and was used to describe the beatniks of the early 1960s who moved into New York City’s Greenwich Village as well as San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district and Chicago’s “Old Town” community. In fact, the word “hippie” was first used by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon in an effort to popularize use of the term in the media. “Hippie” spread far and wide and remains in use today.

Some say the Hippie movement came of the struggles of the 1950s – the Korean War, McCarthyism, Big Brother, The Cold War, The Draft, the Space Race, and the social pressures of the times. Some chose not to get on board with our parents’ beliefs and the “dog-eat-dog” world we bitterly believed they supported. Instead, we checked out.

To the best of my recollection, the Hippie movement began with the Beatniks – young people who embraced the apparent cultural shifts going on in a post-war America. Young people, opposed to everything The Greatest Generation wanted for us, didn’t want any parts of what the generation that fought for our freedom wanted for us. Young people got into the mental escape of drug use and cults.

It didn’t always go well.

The hippie movement turned drug and cult movement spread across society like a plague. Heroin overdoses became epidemic and a curse that remains with us today. In our quest to escape the miseries of reality, we have continued that “escape” decades later only to find out coming off that high the world hasn’t change one bit. The same can be said for alcohol.

The hippie movement, with fluid precision, faded into relative adulthood in the 1970s. Most hippies became responsible adults, had children of their own, and are now running the country. We face huge obstacles and division that are not going away. Until we learn how to unify as a nation and put our country first, it is only going to get worse. The division we face today is nothing new. Opposing factions were hard at it 50-60 years ago. What’s happening now is only the latest chapter.

Now me – I was born amid the baby boom in 1956 and became part of the post-hippie movement of the 1970s with bellbottoms, platform shoes, The Partridge Family, and boring lackluster economy cars. We were post-hippie dorkenheimers who liked looking cool at the shopping malls and social events. In truth, we were not cool…but decidedly luke warm. We missed the Woodstock chapter completely and had to settle for the mediocrity of the 1970s – and so it went.

The hippies who came before us were forced to grow up and were handed the torch that is the mess that is the America we live in today. Our parents feared what was to become the country run by boomers. Most were glad they were old enough to never see the divided culture we are today.

Boomers and the generations following us have to keep working toward making us a more perfect union.

An odd phenomenon is sweeping the nation in 2024 – Gray Divorce.

Boomers and GEN-Xers are calling it quits in numbers these days. Kids and even grandkids are off to college and adult lives – leaving the aged behind, wondering what to do with the rest of their lives.

The answer for some is – to move on…

What makes our generation different is how we have always approached life, I suppose. I guess you could call us the throwaway generation. Whereas our parents and grandparents fixed and kept things, including each other, our generation has traditionally thrown everything away.

For boomers, nearly everything is disposable, including lifelong relationships. It speaks volumes about us as a generation – or does it? A whole lot of us have wound up in comfortable ruts because the unknown – the world out there – is so unnerving. It makes us fearful of radical change.

When we need the courage to move on, it slips right out of our hands. Some of us stay together for financial reasons or that unsettling fear of the unknown. Others part ways because it is just too miserable for them to stay together. As my mother used to say – peace at any price.

Our parents and grandparents were schooled to go the distance – to stay the course despite how troubled and challenging some marriages were. A generation of people who stayed when it might have benefitted them to walk away. I think of my grandparents long ago. They remained together no matter how miserable they made each other.

Divorce was taboo and just not done. For better or worse, and so it went.

Boomers have learned something from watching unhealthy relationships that have come before us – parents who fought all the time and made each other miserable who never found a path to peace. We learned when to call time and jump ship unlike our parents who stuck it out – at times because they had no other choice. Despite that knowledge, many of us have stayed together only to wind up in an unhealthy twilight.

Divorce is a frightening prospect. It means being cast adrift where you are very much alone with no one to shoulder life with. It has often been said divorce is the most traumatic of emotional experiences, ranked even greater than the death of a loved one. With death of a loved one, there’s closure regardless of how painful it is. In divorce, they’re still out there, perhaps with someone else.

We are also living longer than our parents and grandparents. There’s more life beyond 50 than there used to be. More life out there to be discovered. More are asking, “What’s in this for me?”

This is not to say The Greatest Generation didn’t know divorce – it did, perhaps beginning a new trend in marital longevity or the absence of it. My mother divorced in 1957 at age 35 with two children to take care of. Long story short, our father cultivated eyes for someone else, which is typically why couples split up. Other times, couples just grow tired of look at each other’s faces and hearing one another’s voices. Instead of a spirit of compromise and learning how to live with one another’s differences, contempt grows to where a marriage is beyond salvage.

Baby Boomers have approached marriage differently. Maybe it’s that we are more self-absorbed to where we think more about what’s good for our own well-being than what’s good for another. Other times, we pour ourselves into someone and learn our love for someone just isn’t enough. Eventually, our emotional reservoir runs dry with no more to give it. I believe this is what has happened to a lot of people. They’ve become worn down by life and would rather move on.

I’ve personally been shocked by Gray Divorce – with friends who’ve divorced in their sixties and even seventies. Even if it means growing old and dying alone, they’d rather travel that path than continue to be miserable with each other. However, being alone can also mean freedom and the option of choosing a new path to a better life.