Baby Boomers Reach the End of Their To-Do List

Baby Boomers(ˈbo͞omər) Reach the End of Their To-Do List

By Patricia(pə-) Hampl

Life, if you’re lucky, is divided(diˈvīd) into thirds, my father used to say: youth, middle age and “You look good.” The dawn(dän,dôn) of that third stage is glinting(glint) right at me.

It isn’t simply that at this point more life is behind me — behind any middle-aged person — than lies ahead. Middle-aged? Who am I kidding? Who do you know who’s 144?

It’s not just about aging. By the time you’ve worked long enough, hard enough, real life begins to reveal(riˈvēl) itself as something other than effort, other than accomplishment(əˈkämpliSHmənt). Real life wishes to be left to its own purposeless(ˈpərpəslis) devices.

This isn’t sloth(släTH,slôTH,slōTH). It isn’t even exhaustion(igˈzôsCHən). It’s a late-arriving awareness(əˈwe(ə)rnis) of consciousness(ˈkänCHəsnəs) existing(igˈzistiNG) for its own sake.

The to-do list that runs most lives through middle age turns out, in this latter stage of existence(igˈzistəns), to have only one task: to waste(wāst) life in order to find it. Who said that? Or something like that. Jesus(ˈjēzəs)? Buddha(ˈbo͞odə)? Bob Dylan? Somebody who knew what’s what.

Mine was the first year of the notorious(nō-,nəˈtôrēəs) American baby boom, 1946. The year three of our recent presidents(ˈprez(ə)dənt,ˈprezəˌdent
) were born: Bill Clinton(ˈklintən), George(jôrj) W. Bush, Donald Trump. “You’re a boomer!” we were always told, as if we were named for the bomb(bäm), that midcentury annihilator(ənīl-).

We got all the good stuff.

The postwar hope and determination(diˌtərməˈnāSHən) of our Depression(diˈpreSHən)-era(ˈerə,ˈi(ə)rə) parents was piled(pīl) upon us, the fossil(ˈfäsəl) fuel(ˈfyo͞oəl) of earlier generations we burned up without a care. We had a preposterously(priˈpäst(ə)rəs) long sense of our own youthfulness.

But now the boomers are approaching(əˈprōCH) the other side. Not death necessarily (though the time has begun when no one will say we were cut down too early). We’re reaching the other side of striving.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/14/opinion/sunday/baby-boomers-to-do-list.html