Category Archives: Generations

Leap! She Says

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“If you wish to persuade me, you might think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.” — Attributed to Cicero

To a degree, good books do this, which is why they generate an instant buzz and word of mouth, why they tend to be remembered, the way people tend to remember Sara Davidson’s Loose Change, her landmark book of coming of age in the 70s.

Davidson’s new book, Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?, will also find an audience and have legs, we predict. The excerpt, published earlier in Newsweek, gives you an indication why we think so. She writes not as a keen observer and journalist, although she is both, but from inside 50+ angst, “the narrows, the rough passage to the next part of life.” Work dries up. Suddenly, despite awards and recognition for her hit shows, she “can’t get arrested.” Her nest empties and her lover leaves.

The narrows will no doubt ring a bell for many within the baby boom generation and for those of us who came before, although we may not have been quite so open about our vulnerabilities. Davidson’s candor is bracing. We, who have made a project of telling the good news about aging, admit that a lot of it is confusing, difficult and painful, and we don’t have very good guides about how to do it well.

Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives? will help. Although its focus is on the more aware, accomplished, successful segment of the boomer cohort who have the luxury of choice about their ‘next life,’ there are plenty of ah ha! moments for anyone willing to take some risks about the future. And a lot that will touch you and make you smile and nod in recognition. Davidson’s interviews with Carly Simon on her comeback; self-help guru, Joan Boryshenko on her fourth marriage; with Tom Hayden, about ‘putting [one’s] career drives down,’ and his former wife, Jane Fonda; with Bernard Lietaer (creator of the Euro); and with Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records, stand out for this reader. Holzman’s advice mirrors the 2young2retire credo:

“You don’t have to figure it all out. Pick something and do it. Take a look at what’s out there and see what you’d like to stand next to. Or if you don’t see anything . . . Wait till lightning strikes…Because it always does.” Amen.

What to tell your kids…

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Everyone is encouraged to write a last will and testament. But lately, there has been a great deal of interest in the ethical will, a document that passes along something more important than property and tangible assets. An ethical will can be a summary of what you hold sacred. It can be a manual for living, a ‘moral compass’ for your children and theirs, an ultimate act of generativity. Here are a few things we plan to tell ours:

  • Never stop learning. It will bring you more than knowledge. Learning will keep you curious and engaged in life. It will open your heart as well as your mind. It will bring you friends. It will bring you joy.
  • Take nothing for granted, not your spouse or partner, your children, your parents, your job, your health, your political system, the planet. Whatever you value needs tending. Attention must be paid.
  • Give freely: acknowledgment, eye contact, forgiveness, kindness, laughter, thanks, touch, and yourself.
  • Everyday, put yourself in another’s shoes; listen better; keep the peace; move your body; enjoy food; work well; play much; sleep enough; ask nicely; save something; tell the truth; cultivate stillness.
  • Don’t look back in anger or regret. Everything is a lesson. Learn it and move on.

The Not-So Silent Generation

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Between the Greatest Generation and much on-going ado about their children, the Baby Boomers, those of us born between 1925 and 1942 don’t get much respect. We are known as the Silent Generation, a term coined for us by Time Magazine in 1951, and we have been called “withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous” and of course, silent. According to a succinct Wikipedia’s entry, we are generally considered conformists, plagued by indecision, the “suffocated children of war and depression.” Personal note: Howard remembers the World’s Fair of 1939 and “Doctor, what brand do you smoke?” Marika remembers everyone in uniform, the jitterbug, and post-war rationing in England.

If you are a Silent (or even if you’re not), consider this:

Silents have been ignored by marketers (we’re good with that!), the popular culture (Elvis, ignored?), and employers (maybe, because we wore our gray flannel suits to work and did our jobs). We may also be the last generation to receive a pension from employers, and the majority of us are retired (not us!)

No Silent was ever elected to the presidency. To this we say, Martin Luther King, Jr., more influential than any president since Truman in changing the course of American history. We say: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, not-so-Silents whose music changed the course of politics in the 60s.

Celebrate Silents with Frank Kaiser. Read historian David Kaiser’s (no relation) blog History Unfolding on the impact of Silents in public life today. Check out Time Magazine’s 70s interviews of prominent Silents like Gloria Steinem. Tell us what you think.