September 21st, 2004
Attention unhappily-aging baby boomers:
All the echinacea, rose water, biometal wristbands, daily fiber, and organically-grown free-range food in the world is not going to stop you from growing old and eventually dying.
You might be able to age gracefully if you stop trying to hang on to your youth; you're all in your mid- to late-middle ages already, and the clock isn't going to turn back.
When I was in university and shortly after, Douglas Coupland's book, Generation X, had something of an influence on me. In short, I was about ready to throw in the towel on the career market and declare social bankruptcy. I was absolutely convinced that the boomers got all the good jobs and I and the rest of my generation were doomed to a lifetime of customer service and door-to-door sales, rented bachelor apartments and taking the bus while only dreaming about vacations to exotic places.
I came up with an idea for Gen-X bumper-stickers ("If every Gen-X-er killed just 10 baby boomers each ... that's all we're asking is 10 boomers each ... " or perhaps "Gen-X-ers: It's not just a fashion statement") until I realised that Gen-X-ers didn't own or drive cars.
Well, times change, of course. First off, the media regularly and monotonously mis-labels anyone in their twenties as Gen-X-ers, even though we real X-ers have all long since aged into our 30's and early 40's. The kids in their twenties are boomers' kids now. And, to some extent, they have a safety shield of their parents' money--certainly more than my generation (also known as the Thirteeners, for the thirteenth North American generation).
But something strange happened to us on the way to oblivion: We found our niches and we have careers and mortgages; we pay our taxes and we watch TV. It turns out that we were all just delayed, not stopped. And--gasp!--we're breeding. That's right, a whole generation of Fifteeners are on their way, and you better watch out, boomlets: They might be a decade younger and outnumbered by you, but I doubt they'll be outsmarted by you.
But back to the boomers themselves. I'm talking only about the urban ones, the disco-dwellers, the ones who thought in the 1970s that they'd live forever and, based on their personal experiences, thought nothing bad could ever happen to them because they were somehow, luckily, the chosen ones: You're getting older, and you're not showing much character about it.
What made you think you'd never die when you were busy bed-hopping, pill-dropping, booze-drinking, and disco-dancing in the 70s? By contrast, my friends and I were regularly talking about the end of our lives or possibly the end of the world when we were in our teens and early twenties. We were well aware of our mortality, and were not afraid to talk about it.
And now that the unmistakable scent of old age is starting to waft your way (oh, I know, it's not upon you yet, but you can sort of see it coming through the artificial haze you're putting up in your mind) you are scrambling to push it back, to get in a few more licks in life before you ... well, before you do what, actually? Do you have some magic age that you think you have to lay down the fun stuff and pick up the knitting needles and whittling sticks?
Just like every generation before and since, you had your fun, your music, your dancing ... and if you never found satisfaction in a shallow lifestyle, trying to claw it back now isn't going to bring any profundity to it. If you never found completion and fulfillment in the wild times of your past, why try to re-create it? I'm not so young that I haven't myself learned that the "good old days" were not so good; our memories just sweeten them and edit them down to something much more favourable than they actually were.
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But if you just can't give up the pursuit of that "ghost of the past", then why not give a listen to and take my survey about these youth-giving songs?