Where did this idea come from? Perhaps manufacturers of $100 sneakers? Travel companies selling hiking tours? Sure, now that every savvy marketer knows how much disposable income our generation is dying to part with, they're coming up with catchy slogans to reel us in. Unfortunately, the concept seems to have spread beyond the world of slick marketing. Do we really want to be 10 years younger?
Many of us were still paying our kids' college tuitions then. We were working longer hours to keep up with the 30-year-old in the next office. You know, the ambitious one who never turned off her cel phone or the one who spent weekends with his Blackberry?
True, more sixtysomethings are still in the work force. Diet and exercise, along with a little nip and tuck here and there means we look younger. But, did somebody bother to tell our bodies that we're still 50? Don't you love the ads for pain relievers that promise to keep us playing tennis until we drop?
To be honest, I snickered at contemporaries who complained about aches and pains until one day I realized how much slower I was walking. A day of babysitting a three-year-old grand child left me exhausted. My memory isn't as reliable as it once was, but I seem to remember being able to do much more physical activity 10 years ago. Well, that's okay because having free time to babysit means I don't have to work the next day.
What exactly is so bad about being 60 that we have to trick ourselves into thinking those years have been magically erased? Why do we have to knock ourselves out trying to compete? I've done all the hiking I want to do and a cruise doesn't sound so bad right now.
It's possible that large numbers of folks our age never got to play tennis in their 50s, never had the time or money to take adventurous vacations? Perhaps they are in better physical shape than they used to be. Great for them!
If we take the slogan "60 is the new 50" a bit further, it follows that "30 is the new 20" is also true. That one is even more annoying, and a bit scary. Does that mean that our 30 year-old kids are just getting out of their teens? Does it mean we shouldn't expect them to be at least a little grown up? Where does it all end?
We're not idling away our days on a park bench. Many of us have either retired or decided to work less and do things we enjoy more. Our nest eggs may not be as fat as we expected but we don't need as much either.
Of course, too many of us will face nasty illnesses in the coming years. But for now, being 60 (plus) isn't so bad.
Not a regular reader of New York Times columnist David Brooks, something caught my attention in today's column "The Biggest Issue." Perhaps I've spent too much time obsessing over the presidential election, and gravitate to anything that promises a little enlightenment over a tortured explanation of the latest poll numbers.
It's a terrific column, and Brooks has given us much to think about. His final words are: "America rose because it got more out of its own people than other nations. That stopped in 1970. Now, other issues grab headlines and campaign attention. But this tectonic plate is still relentlessly and menacingly shifting beneath our feet."
A few passages especially resonated with me. And, I suspect they will resonate with you, too.
- The U.S. assumed leadership of economic power in the 20th century due to, "a ferocious belief that people have the power to transform their own lives gave Americans an unparalleled commitment to education, hard work and economic freedom."
Many of us with advanced academic degrees were raised by blue-collar parents, lived in cramped apartments over the family candy store, watched mom or dad go off to night school to perfect their English. We did our homework at the public library, went to the prom in borrowed dresses, shared bedrooms with at least one brother or sister. Both my parents and those of my husband arrived on America's shores via Ellis Island. Their children attended public universities and earned Masters and Ph.D degrees. Seems their ferocious belief paid off.
- "Between 1975 and 1990, educational attainments stagnated completely. Since then, progress has been modest. America’s lead over its economic rivals has been entirely forfeited, with many nations surging ahead in school attainment."
The oldest Baby Boomers graduated from college in 1968. Their children may have entered the educational system around 1975. What were we thinking and why did we allow this to happen? Were we too busy raising our own consciousness? Did we forget where we came from? Perhaps we bought into the sick psychology of bolstering our children's self esteem and forgot about helping them with their homework.
- Brooks refers to the report “Schools, Skills and Synapses,” by James Heckman of the University of Chicago which probes the sources of our declining educational system. He writes, "It’s not falling school quality, he argues. Nor is it primarily a shortage of funding or rising college tuition costs. Instead, Heckman directs attention at family environments, which have deteriorated over the past 40 years."
Before we beat ourselves up too harshly, we need to look at other factors at play here. Most of our children, and their children, are growing up in households where both parents work. These kids aren't going to the prom in borrowed dresses, but they probably don't have parents at home to supervise their homework either. And what about the schools they attend? Music, art and physical education have been replaced by hours drilling for standardized tests. Young teachers are left on their own and parents who help out in the classroom can only be found in affluent suburban schools. How did our children's education get so far off track? Our parents may have been trades people, factory workers and small shop keepers. But those things they lacked in education and resources were supplied by others. It sometimes seems the opposite is happening now.
- Books addresses middle-class economic anxiety and cites the research. "It’s not globalization or immigration or computers per se that widen inequality. It’s the skills gap. Boosting educational attainment at the bottom is more promising than trying to reorganize the global economy."
Doesn't this sound just too obvious? Is it so easy to lay the blame elsewhere? Perhaps we can better address the "skills gap" by taking a closer look at the kinds of skills necessary for our children and grand children to compete in this world. Have we been brainwashed into believing that every breathing soul must attend four years of college?
There isn't much an individual can do to clean up the mess except to pay attention this November. We can ask the right questions and demand that our elected officials, on all levels, present strategies that make sense. After all, many of us are living proof that excellent schools (not influenced by the politics of the moment) and parents who pushed us along did the job.
In the meantime, let's keep our eyes open and do what we can to help all young people, wherever we find them.
While looking for something in my computer's documents file, I found the following. It was written for my 40th high school reunion in 2003. (Patchogue was then a small town in what was once rural eastern Long Island.) The Sixties seem to be much on my mind lately as I just returned from a trip to New York City, where I spent some time wandering around the neighborhood I lived in after high school in my early 20s. The physical place is barely recognizable, and I wonder if that would be the case with friends of that era.
Message to the Class of ‘63
Patchogue High School Class of '63 40th Reunion Memory Book
The Long Journey Home
When we graduated high school a handsome young president lived in the White House, and some of us were thinking about what “we could do for our country.” No one had heard of the Beatles or knew of a place called Vietnam. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. had not marched on Washington and “Whites Only” signs littered the South. “Gay” meant “carefree.”
Then came drugs, sex, a new kind of rock ‘n roll, the draft, peace marches, clenched fists, burning cities and burning bras. Who could have known that before our teen-age years would end, before we could begin to know ourselves, the lessons we were taught and trusted would be carried away on the wind.
We cast off the old rules, invented new ones as we went along and struggled to find our way in an unfamiliar place. Some of us traveled the straightest path and some of us navigated the winding roads. Some of us may still be wandering.
There are historians who claim our country changed forever on that awful day in Dallas, only months after we left our world of high school. How were we changed? Like archaeologists at a dig, we come here now to discover the artifacts of our past lives and to embrace those who traveled with us.
Scattered from coast to coast and north to south, we remain connected by a simpler time and safer place. Now we gather to recognize who we once were in each others faces, to touch that long forgotten guidepost of what used to be, and what might have been if our map had not been abruptly redrawn along the way.
Scars of a misspent youth, professional achievements and opportunities that were ignored or never came don’t matter any more. We have survived the most tumultuous period in modern history, and we mourn those who didn’t. We return to this place to find the friends we grew up with, share tales of old times and re-connect with those who made their journey over the same winding roads.
Lillian Dufek Reiter
Postscript: It's been five years since the reunion, but I recall that those who stayed close to home were least changed. The year 1963 has often been referred to as the true beginning of the Sixties, so it was not surprising that by staying in a small town and marrying early some of my classmates avoided the upheaval of the era completely. Many flourished and some became victims. Sadly, a few boys who joined the military before the Vietnam War started never came home.
Aren't we all grateful that the slow, agonizing high-drama Democratic primaries are over? Unless surrounded by people who supported your candidate, mingling with folks of undetermined loyalties resembled a mind field. So, why bring it up again? Can't we just all get along?
Hopefully we will. But, there's something about Hillary loyalists that remains a fascinating tale. When, in the history of presidential elections, have we heard so much talk about Democrats crossing party lines to vote for enemy? It may be media hype, but my extremely limited, unscientific survey isn't all that convincing. Will her supporters turn the page? If they won't, why not?
Hillary Clinton's Primary campaign was not only about securing a crack at title to "leader of the free world," it became a symbol for older women on which to hang their hopes and frustrations. How many times did we hear women refer to the fact that their mothers were not even allowed to vote, or that a woman's run for the White House sent a message to their daughters? I'm really sorry that some of our mothers missed out on the power of the vote. I don't understand why some women were so eager to provide a role model for their daughters that they latched onto a woman whose ticket to the national arena was her husband, a woman who supported the deadly fiasco in Iraq.
But I think it goes deeper than that. Women thought Hillary Clinton would bring some good old female common sense and compassion to the White House.
Did they hope a female president would get them a better job, increase their Social Security checks? Would a mother in the Oval Office never send other mothers' children to war? They were sure she would dismantle the "old boys" network, fill top cabinet positions with those most capable, rather than those most loyal? In other words, women were sure she would behave as they would.
There's also a feminist thing going on here. While "a woman in the White House" was not a rallying cry of the '60s and '70s, the movement seemed to promise a bit more than it delivered.
The reasons are complicated, but we still don't have affordable daycare for all, female professionals still make less money than their male counterparts, sexual discrimination still exists, and Roe vs. Wade is in more trouble than ever. Perhaps women of our generation thought President Hillary Clinton would wave her magic wand and speed up the process for all women, their mothers and their daughters.
I'll never understand this one because no matter who has their finger on the button, he or she only got into that position because they were a consummate politician with debts to settle and loyalties to honor. Sorry ladies, there is no magic wand anywhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Over-50 women identified with her so strongly that each time a misguided statement was uttered, each occasion on which she "misspoke" was revealed, her supporters turned a deaf ear. You would think the revelation was an attack on them. I was constantly amazed at how many excuses women made after the details of her arrival in Bosnia became public. Would they have been just as devoted to any female candidate? Was it the Clinton brand?
Is it possible that women have simply taken the art of denial to a new level. Perhaps "the personal is political" took on a new meaning. Will we ever see this phenomena again?
Hopefully, former fans of Hillary will have saved up some of their energy and passion
for Obama. To be fair, I'm not exactly thrilled with his move to the middle, i.e. his recent position on faith-based organizations. Is it possible that Hillary would have done the same? We'll never know. Yes, he has his flaws and still has far to go.
No one yet knows exactly how Hillary Clinton will campaign for Obama, and whether or not Bill Clinton's role will be an asset. Regardless of what the power couple of the '90s actually do, we are the ones who cast the ballots. Hillary-ites need get over their disappointment and do the right thing.
The Karl Roves, dirty tricksters and right-wing bloggers will make it a tough journey. But it's time for all of us to start packing for the trip.
It's been a strange few days. A certain brand of plastic trash bags are touted as "thrifty"on TV, American car manufacturers are closing plants that build trucks and SUVs, and friends are asking to car pool.
And if that isn't startling enough, I actually left the supermarket yesterday with a smile on my face. Sure, part of the joy can be traced to the "you saved $16.43" printed at the bottom of the cash register receipt. Pretty good for $50 worth of groceries. But it was everything that happened before reaching the check-out that almost made me giggle with delight.
For once I wasn't the only one swearing under my breadth over the price of fresh broccoli. It wasn't even lunch time and the pickings were slim at the day-old bread rack. I actually heard a young mother tell a child that he couldn't have something because it cost too much.
The best part was at the check-out counter. The twentysomething clerk didn't make a face when I handed over my cloth shopping bags. Instead of being annoyed that she would have to spend a few more seconds packing up my bargains, we got into a conversation about using such bags and feeling guilty because we sometimes forgot them in the car. Was I seeing things when I noticed the woman behind me was about to place her bags on the conveyer belt?
Are people finally responding to higher food prices? Has the message about how plastic bags defile the environment finally been heard? Are sky-rocketing gas and oil prices making us more than angry, but actually forcing us to change our habits? They certainly are.
The same friend who suggested we car pool to our pottery class tells me that instead of piling wet laundry into the dryer, she scatters it around her yard on bushes and the backs of outdoor chairs. Will Home Depot start carrying those funny-looking clothes trees that used to be in every yard in the neighborhood?
Many of us don't remember what we ate for breakfast, but memories of similar conditions in the '70s are all too clear. I laughed along with everyone else at President Ford's WIN buttons, but secretly yearn for a time when those in power at least recognized what was going on in our worlds. If elected officials refuse to really address these issues, it looks like we've been forced to fend for ourselves. We've been there before. Some of us still have tattered copies of the "Whole Earth Catalog." Some of us have memories that go back even further.
I grew up in a household of Eastern European immigrants. There was always a compost pile in the back yard and the freezer was only for ice cubes and an occasional pint of ice cream. Clothing was handed down and new shoes purchased only after worn-out heels and soles were replaced. I grew up and entered a world where saving time was more important than saving money. The transition from blue collar childhood to white collar adulthood allowed me to have more and better stuff, even if I didn't really need it. Let's not even talk about credit cards.
Our generation will figure out how to get through these tough times. We know how to live more simply and many of us don't feel particularly cheated. We're creative and resilient and know how to work the political system, at least we try. But I worry about our kids, who entered the workforce in the '90s. They had no problem finding jobs that paid well, but they also found too many ways to part with those nice salaries. The line between "need" and "want" became blurred and even though they're more sophisticated about certain things than we were, they've become ripe pickings for slick marketeers.
It seems that those same marketing moguls are beginning to change their message. When did you last hear the word "thrifty" in a television ad? It may soon become chic to be cheap. Living simply will be considered living smart. Creativity will be admired. Doing more with less, making things ourselves, using our public library cards, repairing instead of discarding, taking the bus will fashionable. Plastic shopping bags will elicit jeers.
Let's pay less attention to our shrinking stock portfolios and IRA accounts. We need to accept the fact that our golden years might not be spent on the golf course. Sure, we're "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore," but perhaps getting angry is the first step.
Channeling anger into our buying habits is having an effect. We won't reverse global warming, or ever again buy a dollar's worth of gas, but change is coming. Let's not make the mistake we did decades ago when we gave up the good fight and succumbed to the culture of the Eighties.
My husband, who probably spends too much time watching cable news, is getting more than a little irritated with so many of the young women who are either newsreaders or hired guns for the left and right.
"All they have to do is read," he laments, "but they have the most grating voices." I have a hard time wondering why cable and the networks can't find thirtysomething long-haired damsels who possess both perfect smiles and the ability to modulate the pitch of their voices.
Could it be a sexist charge? Maybe my spouse is simply paying more attention to those wrinkle-free female faces hanging out in our living room. But light-weight male readers and annoying pundits aren't in short supply either. I think there's something else going on here lurking deep beneath and shiny long hair, tasteful earrings and good skin.
The days of Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley and Edward R. Murrow are gone and will never return. I feel both honored and privileged to have witnessed their broadcasts. No one can argue about the environment of both broadcast and print media today. The Fourth Estate has crumbled for reasons well-known, and in their place we are left with ideaologes and newsreaders.
Going back to those thirtysomething faces we see every day, the issue is not gender at all. The issue is simply a matter of timing. Many of them graduated from college in the late '80s and early '90s. They entered the workplace and a society rife with polarization. Shades of gray were placed by black and white, left and right. I'm not sure where it went, but curiosity about the other side disappeared, to be replaced with us against them. It's difficult to have an intelligent conversation about anything today without the specter of partisan politics lurking around the edges. It's just part of the world we live in. Sadly, our kids generation have no memory of Walter Cronkite and his pals.
And it's not just our kid's generation. I recently spent some time with some die-hard Republicans and even though they felt deep disappointment with Bush, confessed to only watching Fox News. I've been warned to keep my mouth shut in the presence of right-wingers, and didn't take the conversation further. However, I've watched every news channel except for Fox News. Guess it goes both ways.
But there are some bright spots here. Young people are bypassing the talking heads becoming informed by other sources, mainly the Internet. Especially on the Left, they are connecting the dots between Washington D.C. and their own lives and making their voices heard. I also read something recently about their cable television viewing. Keith Olbermann seems to be high on their list, and while he's no Edward R. Murrow, he's a good stand-in for getting to the bottom of issues that effect us all.
Scott McClellan, former Press Secretary for George W. Bush, also talks about the media's failing to scrutinize dealings of that Administration in his new book. He's not the first or will he be the last to do so, but perhaps both print and broadcast media moguls will begin re-thinking the importance of their role why they have been anointed as the Fourth Estate.
But what about those attractive female newsreaders my husband finds so annoying? Will the importance partisan politics diminish? Will their bosses demand they tone down the rhetoric and look beyond the talking points? Will they, and everyone of their generation, become more curious about the other side and look beyond personality? Will "us versus them" be replaced by "we the people?" A change of political parties in Washington will work wonders, and we parents and grandparents have to remind them that it has happened before and can happen again.
Concepts of "hope" and "change" seem most appealing to young voters this primary election season. I can't help wondering why we older voters are going in the other direction. Weren't we the ones who embraced everything our parents hated? Weren't we the ones who were determined to change world? Do any of us remember what we were like in our teens and twenties? It's never too late to start again where we left off.
In some ways we're not that different. Daddy may not be paying the rent, but we have proven that we can take care of ourselves. We can't exactly dance in the streets anymore, but we still have the energy to pursue whatever interests us. Gravity may have changed our bodies but I can't believe that our passion has diminished. While we once marched to change the world for ourselves, we now think more about creating change for our grandchildren.
I sometimes think that our Sixties sensibilities can be re-ignited by a little guilt. Did we lose our way in the Eighties? Too many of us spent our most productive years "getting ahead" in careers. We upgraded from two pairs of bell-bottoms and a few tie-dye shirts to bulging walk-in closets. We embraced credit cards and decided we needed more stuff than we could possibly use or afford. We spent too much time at the gym and playing with our toys instead of paying attention to what was really going on in the world. Some pretty awful stuff happened in the '80s and '90s and we closed our eyes.
Worst of all, we cheated our children. The Women's Movement provided much to many. But I can't help think about all those kids coming home from school to empty houses while we moms went to work, some by choice and some not. We broke down barriers for our daughters and now watch them struggle to "have it all." Somewhere along the line the concept of marriage and children became disconnected. We divorced in record numbers and left our kids to deal with the mess. I'm still trying to figure out who the genius was who told women they could have and raise children on their own, without the benefit of those kids' fathers.
It's time to re-ignite the passion we once felt and take a good look around. We aging Boomers along with our older brothers and sisters still have numbers on our side. We can no longer take to the streets, but we can decide what needs to change and work toward that goal.
Many of us have lost any faith we once had in government, our own and those of our neighbors on this planet. Would it hurt to become more informed and elect leaders who will take us in the right direction for a change?
As individuals we can't tackle global warming, but we can change our habits and encourage our children, grandchildren and neighbors to do the same.
With each passing day, we watch people all over the world endure suffering on a magnitude we never dreamed of. We may not notice it, but many of our neighbors aren't doing so well either. It takes so little to extend a helping hand.
Best of all, we can re-define the term "Baby Boomers" – from a self-indulgent generation, to a generation that uses its enormous resources to do some good. Let's not forget how much power we have and let's use it wisely.
I'm feeling a bit guilty because I'm not ready to trade in my aged vehicle for a Prius. Those energy saving light bulbs don't work with my dimmer switches, and I'm getting too old to do without a little extra blast from the furnace on chilly mornings. Sometimes "going green" seems like very hard work. Carbon emissions are the big bad guys in our environment, but what can we do to to chase them out of town?
The recent birth of a second grandchild flipped a switch in my head. While I may be able to give them a little something for college tuition, I can't do much about making the ocean clean enough for them to surf in. I can bake hundreds of cookies and piles of meatballs and spaghetti for them, but I can't promise clean water to wash it down with. Will gas masks be part of their soccer uniforms?
The principles of Slow Food have always appealed to me. There's a compost pile in the back yard and groceries come home in re-usable bags. I've cut down on red meat, shop at the local farmers market and do my best to avoid fish from far-away places. Very little packaged or processed food finds its way to my table. But am I making a dent in those nasty carbon emissions? Can I do more?
It seems that we can do much more than we think. A recent article in the L.A. Times by Kenneth R. Weiss, "With low-carbon diets, consumers step to the plate," tells us how. It seems the worst culprits are air transportation (10 times more carbon dioxide than cargo ships), methane gas from cows (methane has 23 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide), and wasted food (3% of our energy use is needed to transport our leftovers to the dump). According to the website
www.eatlowcarbon.org/, one-third of global greenhouse emissions come from the food system – transportation, waste disposal, methane gas, processing and packaging. The website has a feature to calculate the amount of carbon in all kinds of food.
We may not be able to help clean up our oceans to buy a new car, but there's much we can do to reduce global greenhouse emissions. This may be the best Low-Carb diet yet. Here are some ideas my family has adopted.
- treat red meat (beef and lamb) as a novelty item until we can completely wean ourselves
- eat only domestic cheese
- trade bottled water for a water filter at the faucet and a few thermos bottles
- try really hard to pass up out-of-season and imported grapes and blueberries
- be more vigilant about buying dairy products and eggs produced closer to home
- replace fresh fish (shipped via air freight) with the frozen variety
- devote a few more square feet to my vegetable garden and grow more lettuce in barrels on the deck
- get more creative with chicken and expand my vegetarian repertoire
What will you do? You may not have grandchildren but it's not about leaving a family legacy. It's about doing the right thing, and now doing the right thing is as simple as a trip to the supermarket. But be sure to read the article first.
I
t's strange how certain truths lurk around the edges of our consciousness, but hit us in the face when we hear them from someone else or see them in print. A brief notice in yesterday's newspaper about an upcoming concert by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band did just that.
"The set list gets tweaked each night, and, if at 58, the Boss isn't offering his four-hour marathons of yore, he's compensating with an artistic wisdom, grace and, yes, fire that he, or we, might not have imagined possible three decades ago."
Where did this good stuff come from? Don't we all want some? Springsteen isn't the only one to have reached this place in life. We've all arrived there. But, are we acknowledging our wisdom, grace and fire? Are we using them?
Wisdom, whether artistic or the more practical kind, is often ignored. We forget that we have it by not paying attention to our instincts. It surfaces when we find ourselves taking longer to make decisions, when we indulge in a bit of self-reflection, when we stop thinking the world revolves around us. It tells us whether we should pursue a certain path, directs us to like-minded people and steers us in the other direction when necessary. Unlike intelligence, which too often complicates matters, wisdom comes from experience shaded by both our actions and reactions. Don't we need to let it surface more often?
My dictionary offers more than 10 definitions of the word grace. I suspect the definition "seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement, form or proportion" was used in the quote about Springsteen. However, I think the following definition applies to all of us: "skill at avoiding the inept or clumsy course, a sense of fitness or propriety."
Aren't we all a bit more careful about what we say to others? Haven't we all become a bit more mellow and not so quick to make judgments? Don't we walk into a room more slowly, mindful of what we'll find there? Perhaps we've finally learned that acknowledging our own power is more important that imposing power over others.
It's easy to see how the word fire is connected to a rock star. But we all have more of it than we think, without the stage, instruments, lights, back-up singers etc. Our fire comes with the passion suddenly unleashed when we forget about pleasing others, when we feel free to express ourselves without fear of judgment, when we toss caution in the back seat and decide to go for a new career, creative activity or adventure. We remember the lives of parents and grandparents who had plenty of fire too, but who never lived long enough to use it.
Everything about rock 'n' roll had an enormous influence on us as kids – often that influence was not particularly positive. Now we've all grown older together, and those aging rock stars are reminding us of something much more positive within ourselves. What could be cooler than that?
There's no escaping the horror stories we hear about the mortgage mess, rising prices and job losses that seem to hit the younger generation especially hard. While I worry about how they are dealing with all this, I also worry about how we seasoned adults are going to deal with our own housing crisis.
Hopefully we are all living within our means, but we're smart enough to know that nothing lasts forever. Life is unpredictable and all kinds of events can turn the best-laid plans on their heads. Spouses pass on, divorce happens, friends move away, children relocate to opposite ends of the country and jobs vanish. We may be forced to dramatically change our lifestyles, or we might begin craving a new adventure. Will our wisdom kick in when we need to make some tough decisions? What options will we have?
As I've been pondering this, I've also been reading "Essential Spirituality," by Roger Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. In the chapter "What Is Wisdom?," he writes: "Visionary wisdom sees that conventional way of living are rife with suffering. Practical wisdom begins when a person recognizes there must be a better way to live and commits to finding it."
I'm not so sure that "conventional was of living are rife with suffering," but I do know that just because we've always done something a certain way doesn't mean there isn't something else that may be better, maybe more practical. Perhaps it is time to reach into those over-stuffed suitcases, filled with the experiences of our lives, and see what wisdom we can pull out.
Okay, after we've committed to finding that better way Dr. Walsh is talking about, where do we go? I was surprised to find myself going to aarp.org – surprised because I was still angry at them for endorsing the senior drug prescription program that seems to have created more confusion than positive options. It seems that housing options are high on the list of issues of interest to the over-fifty crowd. Pour a cup of decaf, kick off your sneakers and plan to spend awhile reading all the good stuff they offer.
The headline "It Takes a Village," grabbed me right away. We've probably sought one kind of village or another during each phase of our lives. In college we lived in dorms among our contemporaries, as singles we gathered amid their own kind, and we young-marrieds prized a home on a cul de sac for the company of other families with small children.
Exclusive senior communities are not the first choice for everyone over 55, and lots of people are creating their own versions of "Leisure World," sans the gates. Since we are the generation that blazed its own trails, why stop now? It may be time to redefine the concept of "village" and start thinking of ways to create our own.
We're definitely smarter and wiser than we once were, and there seems to be no shortage of options available. If we're seeking some kind of change in our living arrangements there's no time like now to begin the "quest to awaken."
