You know how the pharmacy techs ask for your birthday when you pick up a prescription? They do that to match the right bag with the right person, but the other day as I eavesdropped on another customer whose birthday was within days of mine, I admit my first reaction was, “Egads, do I look as old as she does?” I turned around to the mirror and, yep, I do.
Sigh. We baby boomers, the oldest of whom in 2025 will turn 79 and the youngest 61, actually believed we’d never get old. We started with the mantra “Never trust anyone over 30” and we’ve kept going as though we stopped celebrating birthdays 50 years ago. Oh, I know all generations do some version of this you’re-old-I’m-not shuffle, but baby boomers made it an art form. Hence, we’re vintage, not old.
I’m willing to bet a tie-dyed T-shirt with a peace symbol that if you’re reading this you’re a boomer. Heck, I know my readers and we tend to be a gray-haired lot. I’ll buy you a year’s Hack Pack subscription from CrunchLabs (Google it) if you’re a Millennial or Gen Z. Sorry, Xers; I almost forgot you. How about a new latchkey?
Boomers as a generational cohort entered our 20s determined to stop a war and tear down big government, big military, big business, big education and big religion. We frowned on establishment institutions and considered them the root of evil. We are the quintessential “Me Generation,” convinced that what is good for one (me) is good for everyone. We are the PhDs of “my way or the highway.”
Is it any wonder, here at the end of our run, that we get to watch aghast the worst national polarization in almost a century? That identity politics and cancel culture supersede collaboration and compromise? Any surprise that we were stupendously successful at dismantling enough institutions that held together the foundation of American democracy? We’ve been at this for more than half a century. While we may have started with the best of intentions, the unexpected consequences are unnerving.
Anyway, here’s the point: We’re four days into 2025 and a whole slew of us will celebrate Diamond Jubilees this year. I think we vintage folks might actually help the generations behind us do better — if we can let go of our cohort hallmarks, which tend toward being rigid, righteous and reactive.
Key West 2025 | Facing the challenge of choices
We are right about too many people on the island and in the Keys, and the only solutions will come from compromises that will please pretty much no one. But we have to cease the rigid my-side-only positioning that revels in confrontation. For each one of the 83,000 or so of us who call the island chain home, there are thousands of outsiders who wish it were their home. We at best begrudge them a sliver; at worst we lump them together as parasites to be swatted away.
Every public entity — governments, utilities, law enforcement and such — wrestles with accommodating the onslaught of too many people. Is 500 new building allocations enough? Is 3,000 too many? Should recreational fishing be curtailed? What does affordable housing really mean? How long before I get my water pressure back? Making those decisions is a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t proposition.
But we get nowhere when we righteously assume a decision contrary to ours makes the deciders, so to speak, evil, money-sucking, developer-coddling sycophants. The flip side is equally so. A decision to protect the fragile ecosystem over tourism doesn’t make one a woke libtard. There are solutions in the middle if we’re willing to listen.
We’re wrong when we demand immaculate ideology. Boomers, whether politically left or right, prefer things to be pure, with nicely summarized labels for good and bad. Boomers aren’t comfortable in the murky middle where a saint doesn’t become instant sinner simply for voting the “wrong” way.
If we’re to do better over the next 20 years, we’re going to have to dust off the collaboration and compromise models that got stuff done in the middle of the last century. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but the accomplishments of the 1950s through the late 1960s were huge steps toward making our nation more humane — including voting rights, desegregation, women’s rights, Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance and environmental protection. We’re going to have to put our clay feet under the same table, discover our shared values (which we, indeed, do have) and shove aside the if-you-win-I-lose attitudes that make it so hard to get anything done these days.
We elder boomers have a choice. We can cloak ourselves in hard-line rectitude and refuse to share power, or we can dig deep into our experienced wisdom and help even those with whom we disagree build hope, peace, love and joy. You know the choice I’ll make.
Key West Love | Where do you buy shoes for a stranger?
Key West Joy | Loud, proud, defiant and nothing to do with happiness
Key West Peace | What can you do if you’re not Miss America?
thank you, linda. i agree with you… it’s time for some middle ground moves from the boomers (my generation) to advance a democratic agenda… something i sense we’ll need in the coming years in the US.
i admire your perspectives and am grateful that you are connor’s grandmother (and ed, grandfather).
i hope to meet you both! all the best, mickey
We DO need to meet. Maybe we’ll head that way!
Happy Monday, Linda — Hope you don’t hafta break out the down parka!
Thank you for that pitch to encourage our “paying forward” our hard-earned good judgement in how to dial our discussions, conversations, chats, problem-solving meetings, etc. down to a productive level that achieves that collaborative / cooperative model you remind us we used to employ — or hopefully a lot of us do / did.
I’m responding after running across your website primarily because you mentioned your Park Ranger husband.
I was a National Park Ranger in the western states for 35 years. My wife and I are now in New Orleans where she grew up and have decided our new mantra in the coming four years will be “Maybe” — reminiscent of a “children’s story” we recently read while caring for our 6 yo grandchildren — The Chinese Farmer — you probably know the moral, if not that particular story.
I’m connected to Key West in a pretty elemental way, having spent about nine months in Key West April – December 1948 during my first year of life (11/01/1947) as a “Navy brat” before my Chief Petty Officer Dad transferred to Balboa, Panama Canal Zone, we lived at 506 Fleming St, 130D Poinciana Place – according to my Dad’s sadly very sparse Diary-ish record book.
We moved to Panama in December 1948 and left for Brooklyn Navy Yard in November 1951 and thence to Charleston, SC in 1952 and several more Navy Bases after that.
I grew up with stories of Key West from both Mom & Dad, have a few photos that I’m pretty sure were on Key West beaches and never returned until second marriage belated honeymoon in May 2013 where we stayed at Casa Marina and enjoyed a memorable meal at Louis’ Backyard, did the Tortugas day trip Twin Otter flight and roamed about town doing tourist stuff and visiting the local Episcopal Church blessed by a chance meeting with the Parish Priest.
I’ll stop here wit da TMI for a final IMHO based on my predilection to quickly fall back in to “Island Time” whenever possible — maybe try-see we could get da kine young’uns to put they Smart Watches on Island Time!
The Chinese Farmer Story
Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”
The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”
The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”
The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.
Wow! I thought I was the only one out of step with these “quaint” ideas. You hit the nail on the head Linda. We need more “us” and less “me”. This world is in quite the mess, and we, unfortunately, made it. TIme to clean it up.
Yep. Time to do the right thing