Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty

Well, it had to happen. Those of use who heard (and sometimes believed) that we should never trust anyone over thirty, now are twice thirty, plus a little. And we find it hard to trust anyone UNDER thirty. After all, they're just kids, virtual youngsters, what do they know? It's difficult for us to have faith in a someone who comes to fix the furnace who's younger than our children.
A young internet friend of mine published a diatribe about rapatious baby boomers in her blog sometime back, and couldn't understand why anyone would take offense. Guess she really thought that it's not mean if it's true. I didn't think it was even true. Her comments about baby boomers moving over financially to let the younger people have some of the gravy was reminiscent of the sci/fi fantasy stories that posited an automatic death for older members of society, no longer useful, just dead weights. We grasping dead weights are the ones who built much of the culture she enjoys, although I'm sure she thinks we built it all wrong. It's true that some boomers spent so much time and energy in self-aggrandizement, that they gave short shrift to anything but their own ambition and greed, too selfabsorbed to nurture their offspring, the now disaffected gen-x-ers, the thirty-somethings who think their parents' generation screwed things up.
From fifties "adjustment", conservatism and work ethic, to seventies entitlement and greed, that's how they see things have gone. They miss the vast number of boomers who may not have turned on and tuned out, but who assumed a concern for the conservation of the ecology and the culture that they loved. They miss the sixty-somethings who went to church, were social activists, put family first, donated to foreign missions, volunteered within the community, held down jobs, paid taxes, and carried on the valued ways left to them by the previous generation. This is the core of baby boomers which gen-x and gen-next haven't taken into account.
These passionate baby boomers are now puzzled and more than vaguely disturbed, as they see multinational coporations dice for control of everything, the whole enchilada, with budgets larger than some countries, and more power than many governments. These huge companies are determining what people wear and eat, where they live, what news they hear or see, what entertains them, with the crushing weight of a totalitarian regime. Baby boomers don't think they were the ones who set this in motion, as they think back to their small rebellions of natural birth, breastfeeding, and organic cotton baby clothing. While they were sewing on missing buttons, and eating whole foods and buying things second hand, the huge companies were flooding the market with cheap products that wore out fast, were cheaper to replace than fix, with cheap clothing made by slave labor. These boomers were shocked to find that their carefully sought-out bargains came from the present day equivalent of the Victorian impecunious semptstress, who moved from one great home to another to provide a family with clothing, with no economic safety net or social programs. While they tried to find economical used cars with good gas milage, that didn't fall apart in two years, they were shocked to discover that their gasoline came from places like Nigeria, where whole areas of the country are nearly uninhabitable from pollution from oil refineries, and where the federal army runs a brutal security detail for big oil companies. Seemingly while their backs were turned, the food on their table became suspect, adulterated with pesticides, genetic modifications, hormones and melamine. When they investigate what their income investments are based on, they find that they are earning money off the backs of the poor, all over the world, as big business panders to the stockholders, which include them.
The boomers are a group divided. Some are ready to retire, live off the fat of the land (unless their Chryler pensions are cancelled) and let others worry about the state of the world. Others wonder how they can ignore human rights violations, a poisoned ecology, and an ever-widening gap between the haves and have nots. While some laud the progress that has brought much of North America to affluency, others are sadly shaking their heads, and wondering who slipped this by them. I'm in the group that feels like Sleeping Beauty awaking; somehow, we've missed something.
As a member of the best educated, most activist group of retirees in the history of the world, I'm ready to question the status quo as much as the thirty-somethings. I'm not going to sit down and shut up. I have a lot more to do, and a lot more to change. And I've got to get a move on, because the clock is ticking. I'm living in a semi-revolving door empty nest, and who knows when one of the children (and family) need to come back home to recoup. My spouse isn't getting any younger, and neither am I. Suddenly my days are structured by appointments with the doctor, the chiropractor, and various labs. And this is to achieve increased wellness, rather than treat something really dire. Some days I worry that I still need to find out what I'm going to do when I grow up. Maybe, like many boomers, what I'm going to do when I grow up is really what I'm doing right now. More and more, every day, I see that life is what happens while you're making plans. Maybe I should have planned better. But think what I would have missed. And if my continued volunteer efforts help one more woman breastfeed for a few months longer, I've slowed the juggernaut of multinational artificial baby milk companies just that little bit.