Several colleagues and I are sharing the same "problem." It's a good one but still a source of significant unease. Our financial states have gotten much better. Finally we got the hang of doing business in the 21st century. Of course, with that burden lifted, we are easier to be around. So, our relationships have improved. My rescue dog kissed me for the first time today.
Yet, we can't seem to lean in. Perhaps we have become our parents. That's what we vowed to steer clear of. What a mess our parents had been since they had been through The Great Depression. At coffee bars, my mother would down those little containers of cream. My father would pocket packets of sugar.
Starting in 2001, with the economic downturn following 9/11, too many of us Baby Boomers have experienced the kind of suffering we never expected: financial. Just as that was happening, we were hit with aging bias. I vividly recall the first time I appeared for an interview in Manhattan for a freelance assignment and jaws dropped.
Since then, and until recently, it's been The Perfect Storm. Confidence withered. We felt less-than. And increasingly we have been frozen into social silos. Generations Y and Z ignore us. Only Xers recognize that we exist.
The question is: Can we recover emotionally and spiritually? Or are we doomed to be the broken human beings our parents were?
Clearly it's time we had to lean in. But can we make that leap into normalacy?
Gen X and Gen Y might have more time to help if we werent so busy cleaning up the mess the previous generation (boomers) left for us.
Iraq war, borrowing against social security, increased military spending, increased debt, banking deregulation, student loan bubble, rolling back decades of civil right's, the bailouts, and the recession.
Thanks a lot boomers
Posted by: D | 03/02/2016 at 10:55 PM