Oh no, not another baby boomer!

The Boomer Wants To Know—Talkin About Your Generation…

The complaints about the Baby Boomer generation, talking about my generation, have been flying this past year. We are self-focused, selfish, think we are special, think we invented it all, said it, did it and thought of it for the very first time in human history. Oh Boy! My face has a bewildered wrinkle at this moment–one of those that will emerge again in about 10 years and then never go away.

So I do ask myself–what do I have to say? Experience may bring some answers, but not ones that are necessarily universally true. Mostly what I have to say just lead to more questions. So that is the crux of it all–more experience leads to more questions.

So I start with my first question: Are there really any generation gaps, or are we all just at different points on a graph of the same big question about life? Why ask a Gen-X’er? First, because she is my friend. Second because she is willing to tell the truth. Third, because she is at a point on the graph that I remember. I remember seeing years ahead like an unlined drawing pad and knowing that I could draw whatever I damn well pleased. Now I am here, further across that drawing pad and the illustration looks like some crazy scribble of a Calder pencil drawing–scrawling and moving forwards and backwards, but mostly continuous. It is the drawing of the path of my life up to this point.

I wonder what my friend sees on her drawing pad? I wonder what we both envision on the rest of the blank pages we have. Where will our lives take us? Where will we take our lives? So this is the first post of the conversation we have decided to share with you. I hope to share big important serious stuff and also silly and mundane stuff. After all, I can ponder the meaning of life while plucking white and black chin hairs and wondering how much electrolysis hurts and can they even do it when the chin hairs start to turn white? I hope to learn and to laugh and to be enlightened here and there by this conversation. And if you know the answer to the chin hair question, please share.

It is funny that the words selfish and self-focused are used to describe the baby-boomers. I have not heard that before. My impression of the baby boomers from what I have noticed over the years encompasses strength and wisdom and hard work. The words selfish and self-focused were always used about my generation. We were the ones considered entitled, spoiled and arrogant and in many ways and it seems to have grown worse in the newest generation we are seeing now. Teens now are incredibly arrogant and disrespectful and feel the world owes them everything. It’s maddening.

Like most teens though, when I was 15 I knew it all. I think that is just a right of passage we all have to go through at that age. When I was 21 I didn’t care what I knew, I was simply happy to be free from parental control and the laws telling me I couldn’t drink. When I was 25 I was just excited that my car insurance went down. When I was 28 I started to realize that I didn’t know jack and that I had been lying to myself for years. I also started to realize that I was never being my own, true self. I began analyzing my every move and questioned why I did this or that. Was I being myself or was I trying to be something else? All of a sudden, I was 30! On my 30th birthday my second son was just 3 weeks old and I was in a fog. That cushioned the blow of turning 30 but in the back of mind…. OMG I WAS 30!!!!! That’s when I really started looking back on my life and taking stock.

At age 21, my drawing pad was lifeless. It was lifeless because I didn’t really have direction and I just took life as it came and figured things would come to me, I didn’t have to chase them (self-centered, lazy gen-x’er classic trait). Maybe my canvas was just more of a blank slate that I could fill up with whatever I wanted, as long as it came to me. When I was 25 I didn’t even have a canvas, it was packed away somewhere collecting dust, still blank. I had found out some things about my (deceased) father that was unlike anything anyone can imagine. My entire world changed and will never be fixed because of it. On top of that I was in a miserable marriage so nothing really mattered until I fixed the fixable things in my life. And, on top of that I felt like I had missed the boat… I didn’t go to college, didn’t have a good job that would take me places and I was incredibly unhappy and stressed out.

I guess those years thankfully flew by and now I find myself at 34 years old. I have my drawing pad back and it’s front and center. The colors are bright and bold and are arranged in a controlled mess. I got a much later start on it but I know myself better and can be truer to myself now. That is the good part. The no-so-great part is that I know myself. This means I know everything I lack and everything I am not and this breeds an air of self-disgust and micro analyzing until I can’t stand being around myself.

I’m not 21 anymore, which is actually pretty great. I’m in my 30′s (gulp) and have two amazing little boys. I’m in school and will become a paralegal as soon as I graduate and land my first job. I am strong and happy now. The funny thing is, I still don’t know the meaning of life. But who really does? Well, Curly in City Slickers did, but he wouldn’t tell anyone other than saying it was “one thing”. So cryptic, thanks Curly. However, I can say with the utmost certainty that when I hug my children, both of them at the same time, I literally feel like I am hugging my entire world. So, that is my own meaning of life, my own piece of heaven, my own direction and my own motivation. I have my faults, a lot of them. I am incredibly selfish, still. But, if I raise my boys to be good men and decent world citizens then I have done something right. Right?

With all of that, though, for some strange reason I don’t feel like I have all the time in the world to keep filling in my canvas. I feel like I missed so many opportunities and should have done so much more before I had kids, when I had the chance. When my kids are grown and out of the house I will probably be playing catch-up on life and doing things I should have done in my 20′s. The culmination of all of that is a word that strikes fear in my heart …. a word I never thought much about until I hit my 30′s: Retirement. It terrifies me. Since I took things for granted, lived in the moment and continue to live on instant gratification, I have no retirement plan. When I’m 65 I will be one of 4 things: still working, living with my children, living in a trailer trying to survive on a $700 monthly social security check or dead.

Is that a typical mindset of someone in my generation? Probably not. But I’m not your typical person though…I live daily with fears; most are irrational or just dumb. I don’t think about things that normal people think about….and now I have given it a name: micro-analyzing life and myself. It’s a curse. But it’s me. With every step forward that I take, I learn something. But I also realize there are 23 other things that I don’t know.

So, at 34 years can I truly say I know anything? Yes, I can say two things:

1. The more I see the less I know… (thank you Michael Franti for singing those incredibly true words)

and

2. I have to stop micro analyzing and look at the bigger picture… it’s vital to my own sanity and the future of my family.

….and now I’m left with a question….

Is the age where we find inner peace gradually changing and getting higher? It seems like with every generation there is more stress and heartache to keep pushing this age up higher and higher. I was always told I would be really content by the time I’m 35 or 40. I’m thinking that is not going to be the case. Do chin hairs symbolize inner peace? If so, I will gladly take a few.

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