It’s true. Baby boomers are hanging around longer than anyone expected. It’s not our fault. US life expectancy in 1950 was 68. You read that right. Now it’s 79 and even that sounds low when you stop and think about how many people you know who are over 80. As a result, we’re staying in our homes longer – where else would we go? It’s too soon for the assisted living complex and anyway we would go nuts with someone else in charge.
When was the last time you heard that an acquaintance was retiring at age 65? Boomers were always heavily invested in their jobs and careers. It was, and in many cases, still is tied to their whole identity. So it may look like boomers in the workforce are just hanging on too long when it’s really more a case of being unable to let go.
But we are moving. Unfortunately for younger generations, we’re not so much downsizing as we are making lateral moves. We’re getting closer to children/grandkids, or just moving to attractive destinations where we’ve always wanted to live. We appear to be confident that our health and mental acuity can sustain us as well as our quality of life. My mother lived independently until age 99 – in the family home she and my father built just after I was born. That was exceptional in her day but it could be the norm now for boomers.
Generational conflict is nothing new and is just a fact of life. Older people think the young are foolish and young people thing older people are out of touch. Bottomline: we want their energy; they want our money. The fact is that the young will win this battle because we will never have that vitality again but they will surely get our money in the end.
Gen Xers and Millennials will find out soon enough that leading the pack isn’t easy and there will be successive generations nipping at their heels one day. The more some things change, the more other things stay the same.
Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.
“All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare’s Jaques proclaims in As You Like It, each of us playing a series of roles, our “acts being seven ages.” It was a synopsis of life that seemed comprehensive to me until recently, when I found myself again apportioning my pills for the coming week. Surely the Bard would have acknowledged this phase of life. Surely the Age of Prescriptions deserves an act of its own in the “strange eventful history” of our lives.
The traveling circus was before my time. I only knew State Fair midways and carnivals, like weeds, popping up once a year in shopping center parking lots. Wasn’t nearly the same, I imagine, as when the whole community heard the circus was coming to town¬—the opening parade of wild animals, stunning high wire performers, elephants, clowns and human cannon balls, not to mention trained seals and women riding bare-back ponies plus the excitement of tent raising fringed by sideshows of Siamese twins and conjoined siblings along the midway mingled with cotton candy, bell-ringing power challenges, games of accuracy and chance with rifles and balls. In otherwise boring and predictable rural America lives, the circus coming to town must have provided a blast of color, variety and stimulation. A real focus, upon occasion.
It’s been quite a while since I have done a celebrity interview. I think it was 
Now I’m a “senior”, my local council emails me about various classes and activities – Keep Fit, Zumba, Gardening, etc. All to be commended, of course; and as someone who runs a local creative writing group, it’s reassuring to know that so much is available to we older citizens.
I used to really love new technology and what it could do to make my life easier. We had the fun electronic toys from Atari. Spent many hours bouncing a square of a rectangle to break other rectangles. (Breakout)
