RECONSIDER: THE BOOMER
(Note: This was obviously written before the pandemic)
Over the last few months, I have begun to worry that my status as a boomer is becoming a liability, through nothing more than just being born in the late 40’s.
EXHIBIT A: Rarely a day goes by without one newspaper or another running a headline about how the whole economy is going to collapse because of the number of Boomers who are hitting 65 in the next couple of years. You all know the gist of the story: Old Age Security is only meant to last 25 years or so and many of us might live well past the century mark; private pension funds will probably run dry before they can meet all their obligations; the seniors that need to be supported will outnumber the work force by something like 3 to 1. In other words, society is headed toward disaster and, evidently, it’s our fault.
EXHIBIT B: A close friend of mine teaches at a CEGEP. In one of her courses, she asks the students to speculate on what momentous event will determine the society they live in. A while ago, students answered “The massacre at the Polytechnique”. Then it was, “9-11”, followed by “the Obama election.” Now it is: “All the Old People we’re going to have to support.” Because they don’t see her as “one of them” (she hides it well and they are only thinking of people in their 80’s), they confide that they don’t think this is fair and are actually quite angry that they might be forced to give up a huge portion of their pay to support these people.
EXHIBIT C: A few years ago, Globe and Mail, Leah McLaren wrote a column, Boomer bodies are breaking down? Cry me a liver spot, about how disappointed she was that her hero, Nora Ephron, had condescended to write a book about aging. “… if current cultural trends are any indication, I’m afraid that in the coming years we’ll be forced to endure many more philosophical revelations about liver spots, and comic set pieces about low libido.” And poor Leah sees her future victimization as inevitable: “It’s hardly a secret that the boomers have a tendency to act like they were the first generation to experience life on Earth. Because of their sheer numbers, their passing whims preoccupy the culture. When they were young, rock ‘n’ roll and psychedelic drugs were invented to complement the experience. Then they grew up and got jobs and families, so fusion jazz and VCR’s came into being. Now that they’re getting old, we have movies set in old-age homes and memoirs about hair loss.”
The evidence is pretty damming and I can see a ground swell of blame being laid directly at our feet. However, what most of the media, the CEGEP students and certainly Leah McLaren are forgetting is a crucial fact: boomers love changing things.
ACTUAL EVIDENCE A: The media constantly harps on the numbers: it’s all about that huge percentage of seniors in the future. However, I suspect the biggest influence is going to be what all those boomers do with their last years. Many have already retired – early – and are following their hearts, not their golf games: working overseas, volunteering, traveling to remote parts of the world, bicycling through Europe. Call it denying our age or refusing to grow old. Whatever it is, don’t be surprised if we also refuse to live in those senior residences you are currently building for us.
ACTUAL EVIDENCE B: We are not unaware that the young will probably resent us. We also know that what today looks like a solid pension from work will probably be something less solid (or even completely gone) 20 years from now. Conversations are occurring among many of us about the possibility of creating communes again – where we can pool our resources and take care of each other, not only to lessen our burden on society but to insure we can live the way we want. We are, after all, a generation that can smell the need for a movement and have experience in creating them. The young may still have to help, but not to the extent they think.
ACTUAL EVIDENCE C: Ms. McLaren and other members of her “Entitled Generation” need a history lesson and a candid look around. Music and drugs weren’t created FOR us – they were invented BY us, during our youth when, yes, we did rule the roost. But things have changed, as they always do, and we boomers certainly aren’t calling the cultural shots any more. Most of us are dinosaurs in this age of technology (“Eh, Boomer?”). We hold little influence in the fashion world and I don’t know what cinemas Ms. McLaren frequents but all those films set in rest homes certainly haven’t made their way to Montreal.
I certainly hope we can move beyond the “us” and “them” scenario that is being cultivated about the future. Because, believe me, we will not go quietly onto those ice flows you might have in mind for us.
Janet Torge