By Tommy Acosta —
Sedona, AZ — If you are a Baby Boomer and are reading this, STOP right now and click off the page because it’s one of the most depressing things I have ever written. But if you are in the mood to wallow in darkness and self-pity, read on.
Baby Boomers, what happened? Has time so betrayed us, now, that we are but a decade or two away from finishing our stay here on this planet?
What happened to those of us who grew our hair, protested against the unjust wars of our time and dominated three decades with the best music ever made and played?
Looking back at videos of us at concerts, rocking to the Beatles, Stones, Yes, Prince, The Who, Metallica, Cream, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Beach Boys, Kiss, etc., we look at ourselves and we are fat, old, or bald. Sickness racks us. Body parts are failing, and we are getting closer and closer to our expiration date.
We had dreams. We thought we would bring peace to the world. We marched in great numbers on Washington against the killing war in Viet Nam. We wanted to bring an end to evil.
And we failed. Miserably.
The Beatles recently put out their last swan song Now and Then, a final act, a testimonial to the ending of the era we once ruled and can never happen again.
Baby Boomers! Are we still relevant? Do we still make a difference in this world?
Yes, but not a positive one, for sure.
There are those of us who became the “establishment.” People of our age are now in power around the world; Putin, Biden, Xi, Netanyahu, and the religious leaders of the Arab world, to name a few.
There is a possibility that the generations following us may have a bit of compassion for the murdered of the world, where innocents are being blown to bits as they become cannon fodder for those who make money from violent death.
But they too will learn their efforts are useless and no matter how much they demonstrate, fifty years from now when they are old, they will look back and realize they could not make a difference, either. That is, if there is still a world left for them.
Baby Boomers have become irrelevant. We sit aging away in front of our tv’s and devices. The fire for justice, extinguished.
We have grown bitter, hopeless, knowing that the element that profits from disease, ignorance and death can never be defeated. Basically, we have given up.
Where are we now? Waiting for the casket or urn? Or living oblivious to what once was something we cared about?
Sometimes when I see videos of the 60’s and 70s, of the way we dressed and lived and hoped for the future, it makes me so sad to know we are done. We did live through an incredible time and we do have memories of our dreams, but memories only last as long as the body that reverberates us.
The final question is, during our time here, did we make the world a better place. Did we leave it in better shape than when we stepped into it? Did you love.? Were you loved?
Look around and what do we see?
Nothing has changed. Profit-motivated war still rages. Disease still kills. Loneliness, hunger and despair still plague our world.
And the ideals we once held aloft, the hope we had for humankind, were dashed forever on the rocky shores of disillusionment and unhappiness.
We forgot everything we once stood for. We abandoned everything we once believed in. And grew old. And live our sedentary lives, insulated by the beauty of the comforting red rocks of Sedona.
At least we locals have that bulwark against the sadness that afflicts the world.
Peace!
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9 Comments
Jeezus Tommy could you get any more morose? After reading your incredibly depressing article about what happened to us Baby Boomers I had to pull out my old hippie beads and scarf and cry. It’s so sad what has happened to us. You’re are right. We could not change a thing, with our music, with our marches, with our free love. The killing has not stopped. The cannon makers are richer than ever and more children are dying than ever. But you can’t take my memories from me. I will never forget “The Summer of Love” or Woodstock. What we felt was real. What we felt was love and there are enough of us who still love and hope, living in Sedona to make a difference. Try writing something positive about that, something that will lift us up and not destroy whatever hope we have left to create a better world. We need hope Tommy. Use your pen to raise it rather than crush it. I still have hope. No matter how dark things get, one day the sun will shine and there will be no more suffering in this world. Believe in goodness. Believe in light. Believe in us.
Beloved Boomer friend,
It has been ever thus. It is not what happens before or after, but what we are doing in this now.
And what we did beauty full living things in that now. Born in 60, I was more watching the boomers than part of it… As a child, watching the protests against the war, put hope in my heart, and that made me a different person.
What the hippies and Beatnix and musicians and protestors did was amazing! It gave hope and light to our world.
Many of us believe that Earth is a school, and that there will always be darkness encroaching on the light (how to live bigger is the curriculum ).
We are
who we were meant to be and I don’t believe anything is ever too late. The problem and answers have everything to do with what we are doing in this present moment…
What are we “boomers”
doing
with
this
now?
THANK YOU TRACY AND JANICE! You have lifted my fragile heart back up where I want it to be —
This is the time to lift — and embrace — I will not give in —
Happens to every generation. There has been no human “evolution.” We are the same as our species has always been: Tribal and fearful.
The protest against the war in Vietnam/LaosCambodia were quite effective in bringing that war to a halt. It was not effective in showing those who were drafted (unlike the Orange 8 deferment idgit aka Maj. Bone Spurs) that despite disagreeing with our government and it’s lust for war because it is our #1 money shaker and maker! Instead those who bore the brunt of it came home to be spat upon and degraded.
Now we have an all “volunteer” military which means you volunteer to join then you get treated like a draftee until you have tenure. Pays a bit better these days too but many struggle to feed themselves and their families because it’s still minimal salary considering the hours, blood, sweat and tears put in by those in the lower ranks while the senior officers get all the accolades for their sacrifices. But one should know that going in.
As for Pink Floyd, Zeppelin etc. I loved em when I was lean and mean, still love them broken body, mind, spirit and bald head and all! Especially those bands whose messages are still relevant today.
Getting old isn’t always easy but it’s just part of the life cycle so try to enjoy it. Perhaps you’ll come back in a future life with the mind and body of a god or goddess (since there are no guarantees in reincarnation other than it’s inevitable).
OK, boomers, you read, “If you are a Baby Boomer and are reading this, STOP right now and click off the page” and then you ignore the warning only to complain about what you read? Typical.
‘Karen’ was among the most popular boomer name for three decades so it’s no wonder younger Americans turned it into a slur for people like this who get mad after being warned they’re going to get mad if they do a thing they were TOLD NOT TO DO because it was going to make them mad.
If boomers hadn’t become the “Me Generation” we wouldn’t be dealing with selfishness, ego (Trump cough cough) and pollution now in the pursuit of greed and profits. Our generations will spend the next 50 years cleaning up your environmental and financial messes. And social security? You killed that and shortchanged us all. When covid was raging, young people were fine, children were fine and the Greatest Generation and Silent Generation knew death comes for all of us. But selfish boomers who want to live forever locked everything down and we all suffered for it. Boomers didn’t discover the vaccine, Gen X’ers and millennial did, for the record. Boomers still haven’t said thanks; they’re too busy ‘making America great again’. When was that, btw, December 31 1969?
The comments reek of the cultural narcissism of boomers Christopher Lasch warned us about. Sure, your music was ‘better’ cause of your cognitive dissonance. Your moms thought the same of Ella Fitzgerald and we think that of Bad Bunny.
(By the way, Putin isn’t a boomer. The USSR didn’t have a baby boom like the U.S. USSR birthrates fell after WW2 so the birthrate in 1952 when he was born was half that in 1941 when the Soviets were fighting the Nazis. But boomers STILL think it’s all about them rather than reading a history book.)
Hard to know how much worse it could have been without the protests etc…
It was going to go Nuclear, Nixon wanted to Nuke Northern Vietnam. That’s pretty darn far if not the farthest you can go in war. Fortunately his own staff sabotaged his efforts just as Pelosi and Milley did to Trump by denying his access to the National Defense Nuclear Codes that he made inferences to using on Iran and likely Afghanistan as well.
Interesting! Anyone can write about what’s wrong and what went wrong.. but writing about what’s working, or has worked, or become ignited by our past projecting forward.. that’s is not so easy.. And curiously, studying the problem is not part of the solution.. The solution is not found underneath the problem like so many assume.
And maybe Tommy has a point, though we have to wade through his point to get to a bit of light.. Which reminds me.. We have to become pure in our vision of the end result. We have to learn to “partner” with the Forces that all of Nature already abides. Trying to solve the problem by escaping it, or fighting it as part of the solution, maybe that’s what Tommy is highlighting.. It hasn’t worked. Maybe that’s his point. Maybe we meant to be helpful or useful, but maybe we simply didn’t know how.
Maybe the solution revolves around the next step: partnering with what works. What works? Look around at Nature, the Order that everything shares, and learn to harness what is true as part of your vision. Partner with what works.. Meditation is an insight into that but we don’t change the world by meditating.. (well, yes we do but we are now a whole generation later.. “what do we do with a lifetime of meditation?” is the better question..) Instead, recognize that as human beings, our highest embodiment is Innate intelligence expressing “through us” for which we ground “the frequency of God” into the world of humanity.. because, curiously, the only dysfunction on the planet is us (the humans..)!
And why? Because we are out of sync with the governance that Source, Innate Intelligence, the Divine offers and delivers.. Hint: instead, we hang on the hem of the government because we haven’t discovered our own internal governance. Note: Monsanto and gov are not going to save the whales or the bumble bees, etc. Only when the humans step into their power, i.e., their connection with Source, will we then find our voice and step into our true power.. After all, whose country is it? Whose oceans and sky and forests do we in our true power steward?
Turns out the solution is to become a mechanism by which we host Innate Intelligence into the world of humanity; learn to ground coherence into the world and become exponential in our contribution for making the world a better place. PS We do this by advanced understandings of allowing and flow.. and making ChoicePoints™ toward more coherence. And of course, Coherence dissipates Distortion. The Maharishi Effect was demonstrated for almost 50 years to quell violence (https://www.coreresonance.com/maharishi-effect-references/).. By learning how to allow Innate Intelligence to express through us, to allow coherence to ground “through us” into the only dysfunction component of the planet (us), we can reverse what the hippies had the eye for but didn’t quite know how to produce…
Turns out the humans are getting it right.. We are learning the artificial entity (the State) gov does not have solutions. It does not have a nervous system and does not have a connection with Source. Instead, we learn to activate our nervous systems, not so different from living antenna systems, become recipients of Innate Intelligence’s expression and allow Source to flow through us, for what I call “the ride of a lifetime. We discover the awareness that it is our function to host Innate Intelligence/ the frequency of God into the world of humanity through our very being.. The truest definition of the term temple.. We can learn how to do this..
It is a good use of our time!
Have a Blessed Day
J.Hamilton
visionariesLab.com