What Gives Your Life Meaning and Purpose?

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I am a boomer born in 53. My business is thriving. My kids are raised. I am writing and recording and playing music with my band (that does NOT play "classic" rock). We play celtic/acoustic style music. Our lead singer is 24 years younger than me. We are asked often if we are married. We say "yes, but not to each other" ha ha! I look and feel better than I ever have, yet our church, which is going for the youth, has pushed me and others like me aside once they find out our age. This is a totally imaginary line to judge people by, especially in America. I am finding myself with time on my hands and it's killing me. It's good to read something from someone like myself who feels the same way. Surely there are millions more just like us out there who are not going to give up so easily.

MikeW of KY 7:11AM July 05, 2011

I agree with you 100%.

T. Williams of NY 1:14PM November 27, 2009

As a rapidly aging baby boomer, I REFUSE to live in these communities like our parents do/did. They're like living on a cruise ship where they don't get off and interact with the world anymore. Everything is done for them. They have very little contact with folks younger than them. This isn't good at all. Plus they give up everything they own to live there. UGH.
We boomers have been a huge blip on the social, economical, etc., scales since the day we were born. We have changed a lot of things, not all of it for the better. I am ashamed of some of the things we've done/changed. But we can't go back.
I feel we will be changing aging, retirement, where we choose to live and how, as we've changed so many other things. Hopefully, these changes will be good ones.
Thanks to good medicine, we are living longer and healthier lives for the most part. That good medicine comes from research, innovation and more. If that is interfered with, as in these bad bills that hopefully won't get passed, we will no longer have research, etc. By these bad bills, the government is trying to send us back to the stone age regarding health care. Yes, health care needs to be overhauled...but NOT like this!
There isn't a doctor alive who makes the kind of money like those bailed out bankers, auto companies, and their ilk. And it's still happening; there is no oversight at all.
These are the scariest times I've lived in and that includes growing up during the Cold War. At least we were united then against communism, no matter what political party we belonged to. I've never seen this country so divided. Unless you count the Civil War that I've only read about.
Sorry for the digression...bad habit of mine, but one thing leads to another.

withavengeance of MD 11:04AM October 31, 2009

Perhaps you are looking at the article from a non-American viewpoint. So, I'll go easy on you even though phrases like "it makes them as worthy as when they were young" may be considered by some Americans aged 50 plus as "insulting". Here's why:
I'm a member of the Early Boomers (born before 1954). Many of us remember when television had not be in our homes because the majority of American parents didn't purchase TV sets until around 1954 (give or take a year or so). Therefore, we remember the age of radio. We remember the Moon Landing, televised LIVE.
We have the highest, all-time record of good health for any majority-aged group around the world and therefore, we are not "old". Maybe those our age in other countries are "old", but we're NOT! In fact, most among us are youthful looking (strangers think my children are my siblings!) and therefore, we prefer to be call ELDERS, as the respectful in our children's and grandchildren's generations refer to us.
We are the Woodstock generation. We marched for equality and peace. We originated the idea of community farms to begin with. So the fact that there are those 50 plus growing vegetables and fruit is nothing new to us!
You say we need "responsibility that would give meaning and purpose"?....HA! I'll clue you in, Hipolito:
We are beginning to retire which means, we have a LOT more time on our hands. Before NOW, we've been busy with the RESPONSIBILITY of raising children and now that the children are grown and on their own, WE'RE BACK to let the rest of the world know we can really shake it down! Maybe those our age in other places around the world will be able to join us.
We have the highest record of longevity (meaning WISDOM), and the highest number of VOTES...and we can vote in a BLOCK!...and we plan to continue to have it OUR way. So, watch out world....here we come!

T. Williams of NY 10:10AM October 31, 2009

This purpose-driven community is a brilliant paradigm for the old inasmuch as it emphasizes what the old can do and deemphasizes what they cannot do. In a sense , it clothes the old with new responsibilities that would give meaning and purpose to their "aging" concerns but with a twist: it makes them as worthy as when they were young and this alone is enough impetus for such a community to bloom in other parts of the world.

Hipolito U. Gagni 5:41PM October 30, 2009