Boomers were never meant to align un-thinkingly to the structures and values of the past. We were voyagers of the expansion of spirit. Our role was to increase our awareness of the possibilities of our world (for ourselves and others), preparing successive generations to accept a new paradigm and their role in the creation of the new structures for this new world.
This meant that Boomers often had a uneasy, confusing and, sometimes, unethical relationship with reality. Boomers lives often seemed more about compromise, moral ambiguity, self-doubt; finding fault with themselves and others. They were the purveyors of “greed is good” and took the path of least resistance by sometimes taking short cuts to wealth.
But more then any recent generation they’ve devoted their lives to their search and understanding of truth, of their truth. and to answering the forever question “who am I?” and (as stewy would say) “What the deuce am I doing here?”
We, the boomers, intuitively knew that answers to these questions were at the core of a life well lived.
And while the criticism that all baby boomers are “Consultants” is, on some level, as true as it is funny, it is also reflective of the emerging notion that, on some level, belief creates reality, and that we all have the capacity to be the experts of our lives.
The book hasn’t yet been written on the Boomer generation, so don’t count us out. If Strauss & Howe are right that we are not, by any means through with the crisis that began in 2008, this means that your local Boomer, maybe the one sitting next to you, the one who was not always responsible, a little flakey, confused and depressed much of the time could be a wonderfully stabilizing force in a changing world, an anchor to some eternal truth because they were the ones who needed to ask “why?”
"We are stardust, We are golden*"
(*Woodstock by Joni Mitchell)