The Emerald Rose

       With due respect this was on CNN this morning and I found it so good I had to share it with you. I am the beginning of the “Boomers” at 66 years old, and as we look forward (or backward) this is a pretty good assessment. Enjoy!

COMMENT OF THE DAY: “I blame Generation X on Dr Spock. Instead of encouraging their creativity, we should have made them take the trash out.” –Zenmistress

For many baby boomers, the proverbial glass is four-fifths empty. A Pew Research Center study shows that 80 percent are pessimistic about the future of the United States. The study shows that they are more worried than their elders and a lot more concerned than the Millennial Generation, which was only 60 percent pessimistic. This story set off a war of generations, with the boomers and Generation Xers trading barbs and still others wondering where exactly they fit along the pantheon of named age groups. Some also shared personal stories about their lives.

New study finds baby boomers are in a funk

DonBeal put the blame on boomers. “Our parents were called the Greatest Generation, but what are we going to be called? We are walking off the stage with the United States in decline. We have a federal deficit that is going to be a burden on our children that they may be able to deal with only by having a further reduced standard of living, and we could not find the courage to deal with it. We baby boomers have failed. We are a money-grubbing bunch, only concerned with ourselves.” 4wonderland said, “I’m a boomer and very happy with my life. I didn’t get greedy but invested well and paid attention. I didn’t lose my shirt or my retirement. I worked for a non-profit helping women and children most of my life so I feel that I contributed something to my fellow humans. I don’t like the way the world is heading but no generation likes what the next one is doing anyway.” NotaBoomorX wasn’t sure of their generation. “I’m 45 and I’m supposed to be a boomer? Uh, wrong pal. I didn’t march in anti-war protests. I got to enter the job market right after the go-go ’80s and the older boomers (screwed) up the economy. Generation X? Yeah, let’s just skip the tatoos, OK? … What the hell is my generation called?”

Some blamed other generations. mrdinkers said, “I’m a baby boomer and more angry than pessimistic. In my view, the generations are getting stupider, lazier and greedier with every decade.” Yodanonymous quipped, “Boomers may be losing hope, but those of us in Generation X and beyond never had any to begin with.” To that comment, Zenmistress replied: “Hope is a choice … Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time playing World of Warcraft, you might have accomplished something by now.” Mikeb1 wrote of Generation X, “We carried the boomers. Everything in your life since the ’80s … has been funded by money borrowed from my generation and the next. What we have done is make your lifestyle possible.”

DeaconLynch wrote, “Some of the comments here between boomers and Gen Xer’s are a bit much. And personally I don’t think it’s right to throw an entire generation under the bus. What I will say is this: America has changed. In their day, working toward retirement was an achievable goal, but not today. People younger and younger are discovering it’s not even in the cards.” fireybuddha said, “My mom, who was 4 when the great depression came to town via their radio, told me I’d experience hard times like that, that the pendulum always swings. I told her it wouldn’t happen like that — not again. We’d learned too much.”

And, finally, there was YoungSinatra: “I missed being a baby boomer by one year. Technically, the boomer cutoff is 1964. But I must say this is the most word-for-word accurate article I’ve read on CNN. I think almost 100 percent of what they said is true about me. Wow. Nice to know I’m not alone.”

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   “To be seventy years young is sometimes more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.”        –  Oliver Wendell Holmes