Boomers are known for their optimism. Experts attribute this to our having grown up in the post-World War II euphoria, when anything seemed possible. Whatever diseases hadn’t been cured yet would soon be eradicated, due to the ascendancy of scientific breakthroughs. Walk on the moon? Of course, technology paved the way. The economy? Booming. Even the rise of liberal religion in our sophisticated suburbs (more community center than judge of righteousness) took the sting out of such “outmoded,” unhappy-making notions as eternal damnation. All of this contributed to the promise that a happy ending for not just our generation but all of humanity was inevitable.
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Child development experts, such as Piaget and Kohlberg taught that our characters get set early in life. Which can be the only explanation as to how we managed to go through the competitiveness of our overcrowded school and work-entry years, the assassination of JFK, the Vietnam War, Watergate, our new diseases, wars and so on and on, with our optimism still intact. (Of course, along the way, we stopped trusting institutions to take care of us—but remaining oddly optimistic, we transformed the sense societal betrayal into the sense of the empowerment of ourselves.)
And so, and yet, turning 60ish—dealing with parents on the wane or already gone, forced to confront our own mortality, adult children who disappoint and/or disappear, concerns about health and aging, financial shadows, etc.--the notion of happy endings increasingly feels like someone’s idea of a bad joke.
Of course, dyed in the wool boomer that I am, I see even this ultimate confrontation with mortality and the like to represent a maturation on my part—and…I take that as an optimistic sign. Of what? That life will somehow, indeed, turn out to be ultimately meaningful in the end.
In my next blog, I will demonstrate that whining and maturity—all held within the framework of hopeless optimism—are not mutually exclusive.
Carol Orsborn
Comments (1)
I saw your page at http://www.theboomerblog.com/2007/06/on_happy_endings.html and wanted to suggest a resrouce to add: http://www.FreePatentsOnline.com. This site allows free patent searching, free PDF downloading, free alerts, and more. It is a good resource for IP attorneys, patent searchers, scientific researchers, students, and small businesses.
Posted by james ryley | August 7, 2007 6:44 AM
Posted on August 7, 2007 06:44