For Retiring Baby Boomers: Life is what you make of it...

 

For Baby Boomers, it’s that time. There are so many friends and family members retiring soon. It’s such a finality. The boss I have loved working with for the past ten years will be gone soon.

What’ll I do? When you …

Are far away..

& I am Blue…

What’ll I do?

 

As my mother told me many years ago, “All of Life is about change.”  And I would add that it’s about how we adapt to change, really. I started my working life when computers were as big as a car. Now we run programs on micro-chips the size of a fingernail.

 

I was born in the fifties during the Cold War.  Back then, we were afraid of nuclear annihilation.  Now, we are living with terrorists who threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages. We are faced with the phantom fear of beheadings and torture. The irony is that technology has become so advanced and we still look back at fears that haunted us in the Middle Ages.

 In spite of this, we have seen incredible breakthroughs in science and technology. The Golden Age of Information Technology has arrived. We are braced for many more wonderful discoveries in the 21^st Century. It’s like standing at the peephole of King Tut’s Tomb. What do we see? Wonderful Things! Many more advancements in medicine and in future technology that will enhance the way we live our everyday lives are in store.

 And still, we tend to be a bit sad to see things change. As McLuhan said:

 “When faced with a new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. Suburbia lives imaginatively in ‘Bonanza-land.”

 

I have long suspected that retirement would open up this Brave New World for Baby Boomers. Those of us who feel that there is life, a vital and productive life to be found on the far side of fifty, should feel energized and re-vitalized about this Golden Age we have landed in. And that’s why the gift of Retirement and Old Age may be a Blessing or a Curse. Old saws still apply.

 

Life is what you make of it. So Viva Retirement and Bring it On! We Baby Boomers have survived so much, and so we will look forward to all that the future holds in store.