Respect your elders

Lately, I’ve found myself drawn to younger adults – well, relatively speaking, actually more like middle-aged adults. When I spot one in the dining room, I’m pleased when there’s an empty chair. I suppose I just want to connect with “one of my own…”

During my tour of retirement facilities, I’ve run into very few residents from my own generation. I’m a Boomer from the first wave – born less than 10 years after the end of World War II. The average age of folks I’m meeting is almost 85. These people are of my parents’ generation.

I’ve become quite fond of the members of “The Greatest Generation” whom I’ve met along the road. They may be becoming a bit forgetful, idealizing their twin periods of greatness: the Depression and the War. But they’re far less ambivalent about their values and deserve credit for an amazing record of social progress that took place during “their time” as the dominant generation.

A lot of Boomers, including myself, became convinced that we were instrumental in a lot of positive change that occurred during our first half-century on the planet. But, as I’ve reflected on the matter, I’m convinced that the key actors in that transformation were mostly born earlier – people our parents’ age.

The first half of my trip opened my eyes to Canada. I have a newfound affection for our neighbors to the north and now understand why my younger sister has been content to remain there for the past 40 years even though she has the right to live in the good old U.S.A.

This second half – still in progress – has provided a huge dose of “face time” with older Americans. I no longer depend on jokes to break the ice and no longer worry, when I invade a table full of strangers, whether we’ll have much to talk about.

Now, I believe I’m becoming interested in putting things together – in reconnecting with my own generation with a somewhat new outlook, perhaps it’s a sense of history.

I believe the most powerful discovery that I may have made is that a new stage of life has emerged over the past century – and age between “middle” and “old”.

I kind of like the word “elder” for this age – which seems to lie somewhere between ages 55 and 80. The “elders” (dare I say, “We elders”?) are post-retirement, pre-impairment people who are financially independent and not otherwise driven to continue full-time employment in the same field they occupied during their 40s and 50s.

I think the Greatest Generation was the first to offer this bonus era to millions of people. Caught unaware, people in my parents generation resorted to motor homes, better homes and gardens and a whole lot of television to fill the added years.

Some, of course became active in church or other volunteer endeavors – and not a few just kept on working longer. But most, I believe, were caught unawares and – as they’d always done before – simply made the most of things as the years went by.

And now that the years have gone by, many “seniors” admit to being rather surprised to still be around. Most of that generation had a sense that only ten or fifteen years of life would remain after retirement.

It has occurred to me that Baby Boomers have a new responsibility. Recognizing that a new period of potential productivity (the “Elder” era) exists and accepting that we may not yet have made the kind of contributions that would earn us a rating near “great,” perhaps we should devote some of this huge new supply of human resources to making a difference.

One-third of us averaging just two weeks each year to worthwhile projects would produce a million person/weeks of volunteer work in every state of the union. That’s a workforce.

Oh, I don’t suppose there’s much chance that we create enough value to becoming viewed as equals to our parent’s gang. We’ll never be perceived as having paid our dues as children and young adults. But I’m more inclined, based on my new perspective about aging, to do my share.

My goal is first to stay alive for at least another decade or two and to become and remain as healthy as possible; then I’d like to perform a quantity of good works that would make me feel justified – at the end of that period – to conclude that I had made good use of the bonus time.