(a sequel to Post 1.3, Selling Us Daddy's Car)
The "New Old"
For Boomers, there is compounding evidence that our later years will be as big a departure from the old norms as our early adulthood.
Our health tends to be better than our parents at the same point, perhaps because we were raised with better diets from an earlier age. We got an early wakeup call about things that can deter decline, such as diet, exercise, brain fitness, and Omega 3s. Meanwhile, new medical breakthroughs seem to keep happening weekly, from pharmaceuticals tailored to one's own genome to pivotal proteins in Alzheimer's plaques. And if that isn't enough, they keep coming up with new lotions, potions and lasers that let you prolong a youthful appearance if you wish to fool Mother Nature some more.
Overall, we tend to be much better informed about our options and much less shy than our parents were about asking questions and expecting value and evaluating results. We've held more jobs in one lifetime and often acquired sklls in more than one discipline. All of this tends to create a wider point of view that seeks a broader menu of options, including the option of not retiring.
To a big bunch of us, much of this seems a good thing, since between the housing slump, the credit crunch, the declining dollar, and our shrinking portfolios, not to mention our rising costs of health care, we may have no choice but to keep on being engaged for pay anyway, especially if we want to access those nifty treatments they say will let us do that long and lively thing.
Our health tends to be better than our parents at the same point, perhaps because we were raised with better diets from an earlier age. We got an early wakeup call about things that can deter decline, such as diet, exercise, brain fitness, and Omega 3s. Meanwhile, new medical breakthroughs seem to keep happening weekly, from pharmaceuticals tailored to one's own genome to pivotal proteins in Alzheimer's plaques. And if that isn't enough, they keep coming up with new lotions, potions and lasers that let you prolong a youthful appearance if you wish to fool Mother Nature some more.
Overall, we tend to be much better informed about our options and much less shy than our parents were about asking questions and expecting value and evaluating results. We've held more jobs in one lifetime and often acquired sklls in more than one discipline. All of this tends to create a wider point of view that seeks a broader menu of options, including the option of not retiring.
To a big bunch of us, much of this seems a good thing, since between the housing slump, the credit crunch, the declining dollar, and our shrinking portfolios, not to mention our rising costs of health care, we may have no choice but to keep on being engaged for pay anyway, especially if we want to access those nifty treatments they say will let us do that long and lively thing.
Meanwhile, for those lucky ducks who cashed in on some IPOs and no longer need to think about income there are plenty of options for remaining engaged. They can swing a hammer for Habitat, tutor kids at risk, preserve pottery on archeology digs, count whales at sea, or serve on boards of trustees.
Something,
anything, that still means making a difference.
Bridging the gap
The reasons that Boomers will keep seeking a separate identity are the same that led us to start pulling away from the 'rents in the first place; we can already see that our futures will look a lot different than theirs at a similar stage.
Now, as then, our successes will take different mindsets and different strategies. Where they often had decent pensions, we need a life plan that can weather the ups and downs in our 401(ks) to keep us afloat to 100 plus if that "long and lively" thing works out.
To cope with this double whammy of an accelerating rate of change plus a shrinking safety net, it may prove to be darn useful that so many in our gen share an extra itch for resilience and self-sufficiency.
Reversing Horses and Carts
We of the about-to-be "New Old" are already accustomed to seeing our kids peel off seeking their own autonomy and we expect them to sigh and roll their eyes if we belabor our own beliefs. But our parents were raised to expect the opposite, an elder-as-sage kind of reverence, and we haven't given them very much of it.
It's hard to entirely blame them if they'd love to be proven "right" in their later years by having their Boomer kids finally make the same sorts of choices that they did, even as we acknowledge between ourselves that some of their hopes about what we'll want next aren't too realistic.
All the above leaves some of us feeling a need to push back slowly so that this next transition might take place more organically instead of seeming as in-your-face repudiating as our first leaps did.
This sometimes makes it hard to be honest. It's tough to point out without feeling mean how many horses and carts have flipped since they made their own choices. It's not just the age-as-sage issue that has been reversing itself; it's the whole notion of what aging itself is likely to mean.
To take one example: much of the "Greatest" gen liked having the option to climb into the bleachers and watch from a distance as the world picked up its pace. But we Boomers already know that we can't afford to quit pedaling if we want healthy bodies and brains (and checkbooks).
Fortunately lot of us think becoming unplugged feels like its own early demise and don't want to go there. The New Old will be too accustomed to feeling instrumental to sideline themselves so easily.
But if we are going to be batched in the same sorts of marketing bins as the eldest of our parents until our own retirement demo attains critical mass, then our challenge will be, as it was back then, to claim our own identity. Then perhaps we can help things transition without too much collateral damage.
The reasons that Boomers will keep seeking a separate identity are the same that led us to start pulling away from the 'rents in the first place; we can already see that our futures will look a lot different than theirs at a similar stage.
Now, as then, our successes will take different mindsets and different strategies. Where they often had decent pensions, we need a life plan that can weather the ups and downs in our 401(ks) to keep us afloat to 100 plus if that "long and lively" thing works out.
To cope with this double whammy of an accelerating rate of change plus a shrinking safety net, it may prove to be darn useful that so many in our gen share an extra itch for resilience and self-sufficiency.
Reversing Horses and Carts
We of the about-to-be "New Old" are already accustomed to seeing our kids peel off seeking their own autonomy and we expect them to sigh and roll their eyes if we belabor our own beliefs. But our parents were raised to expect the opposite, an elder-as-sage kind of reverence, and we haven't given them very much of it.
It's hard to entirely blame them if they'd love to be proven "right" in their later years by having their Boomer kids finally make the same sorts of choices that they did, even as we acknowledge between ourselves that some of their hopes about what we'll want next aren't too realistic.
All the above leaves some of us feeling a need to push back slowly so that this next transition might take place more organically instead of seeming as in-your-face repudiating as our first leaps did.
This sometimes makes it hard to be honest. It's tough to point out without feeling mean how many horses and carts have flipped since they made their own choices. It's not just the age-as-sage issue that has been reversing itself; it's the whole notion of what aging itself is likely to mean.
To take one example: much of the "Greatest" gen liked having the option to climb into the bleachers and watch from a distance as the world picked up its pace. But we Boomers already know that we can't afford to quit pedaling if we want healthy bodies and brains (and checkbooks).
Fortunately lot of us think becoming unplugged feels like its own early demise and don't want to go there. The New Old will be too accustomed to feeling instrumental to sideline themselves so easily.
But if we are going to be batched in the same sorts of marketing bins as the eldest of our parents until our own retirement demo attains critical mass, then our challenge will be, as it was back then, to claim our own identity. Then perhaps we can help things transition without too much collateral damage.
An organic transition?
Perhaps
we can cushion the impacts this time by thinking it through in advance.
Our gen has gotten good at handling two competing thoughts at once (such as cynical idealism), so perhaps we can figure out how to have a "revolution" that's gentle rather than violent. a movement with a positive impact that offers something new of its own before it upends the status quo.
It's not like we want to shutter every nursing
home or tell the vendors to quit pitching those golden-age videos to
the oldsters who still want to buy. The marketplace will take its own
toll on offerings
for which the windows are closing; we don't need to accelerate that
decline unless we feel forced to resist.
But here in the interim, we might start asking our own questions again.
If our own generation can't even get our heads around some emblematic mascots yet (see Post 1.1), how can we expect Madison Ave. or Main Street to figure out what we really want and then adjust what they offer accordingly?
If our own generation can't even get our heads around some emblematic mascots yet (see Post 1.1), how can we expect Madison Ave. or Main Street to figure out what we really want and then adjust what they offer accordingly?
It's an interesting problem, and it's not my job to solve it, but I do welcome your thoughts if you care to share some.
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