Can any baby boomer honestly claim that they aren’t afraid of getting old?
“Old” just isn’t cool.
I remember my grandmother, an old woman with a head of white hair, knitting in her rocking chair. She would cook for us, make us snacks, and was always around. Needless to say, she didn’t work. Women only started entering the workforce in the baby boomer generation.
As career women, my mother, and my aunt, (an extremely successful engineer,) were real exceptions to the rule.
They don’t have white hair. I guess that’s not “cool” anymore either. I mean what woman over 50 doesn’t at least dye her roots?
I read a great article once, but sadly don’t recall the author. One sentence in particular, really illustrated how today’s grandparents are different from those we used to know. The sentence went something like this
“Today’s grandparents “hang” with their grandchildren, in jeans, while listening to the Beatles, and then go out partying.
These days we have a wide range of medication, which claims to make us young again. Everything that has to do with the so-called “best age” or “best time of your life” is in high style.
Actually, the average person reading this blog, has a life expectancy of over 80 years. So at age 60, we still have ¼ of our life ahead of us, a life which we expect to be healthy and productive.
So how do we deal with growing old?
Notice that in the household, our kids teach us everything about technology.
But in the workplace, well that’s another story!
We are the ones in leadership positions, and yet we wear the same jeans, or the same fitted suit, as those “kids.”
Let’s face it. We don’t want to grow old.
And so, how do we accept that these “kids” are ready to give their opinions and that we can trust them with important business tasks? We have to trust them. Not trusting them could mean getting left behind, or getting fired, causing a sort of mini death, the ones we live before we actually die.
I read an article, which claims that grandparents in the U.S. don’t want to be called grandparents anymore.
No. They want to be called uncles, aunts, or by their first name. This really surprised me, because in the U.S. it seems that the desire to stay young, is a little less intense than in Brazil. For instance, you see a lot of women with white hair.
If we fight the same battle as these youngsters, how do we deal with the fact that many of our “competitors” arrive fresh out of school with such pride and arrogance?
Growing old gracefully is an art. Feeling fulfilled and complete is also an art form. Having the courage to leave a job and tackle a new career path, requires really knowing one’s self.
We have to have this perspective, if we want to accept the youth, which is currently flooding into the business world. Similarly, the youth also needs to understand what goes through our mind.
That’s the only way we’ll get anywhere, the only way we will ever understand anything. Barefoot.
