our day has passed

When we were young, we felt that we had life by the tail. When we got older, we realized that we had something by the tail and we were afraid to let go.

The problem is that we boomers seem to have, as one young man put it, a “cultural death grip” on society.

Listen to the music in the stores. It is ours. Listen to the music being used to sell stuff on TV and radio. It is also ours. Our groups drives advertising and just about everything else.

It is no wonder that younger people get irritated with us.

I asked my son one day what music did he thing he would be listening to when he was my age. His response: probably yours.

I am not sure what we have done to our kids, but there is no real culture at their age.

When we were young, we listened to a shared music, had probably the first nationally shared interests in the history of the world. A lot of that was because of television. We could see stuff and could want to become a part of it immediately.

And it was fun.

The Beatles came on Ed Sullivan and we were enthralled. Overnight, schools had to ban Beatle haircuts. We saw protests and heard music and watched a war that we were winning at one time be trashed by news anchors and bought into it all.

But as we got older, especially since there were so many of us, we began to like to remember.

The Toys R Us ad campaign that said, “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us Kid” was right down our alley. People in our age bracket on one hand liked to talk about how old they felt, but on the other hand, didn’t want to grow up. We wanted the age without any of the responsibility. We wanted to be perceived as being older and wiser but didn’t want to act older and wiser.

It was our generation that stopped kids calling adults Mr and Mrs, that stopped kids from acting respectfully towards adults. One way we did that, of course, was by acting like jerks in front of the kids. That is the best way to remove the feeling of respect.

We were young, we were strong, we were physically powerful – then we got older and we can’t seem to acknowledge that. It is weird how many women and men we see in the mall who are dressing just like they did 40 years ago (or how they wished they could have dressed). A generation trapped in perpetual adolescence.

We will get to the retirement homes and the Stones and Beatles will blare out of the speakers, we will sit around and talk about how great it was back in the day. It will be silly.

I suppose, though, no sillier than listening to the same music we have listened to for the past 50 years, playing over and over again on our radios. The singers are getting older and older, dying off one by one, until we just have to admit that the day is gone when we were young.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 says There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. The Turtles sang that same thing back in the 60’s. of course, that song will come on again every couple of days on the oldies station, and will put a lie to itself.

Things have to pass. I guess part of the problem is that there is nothing better right now to pass on to. Our society is not particularly fun or good right now. There is no real music outside of Contemporary Christian music that is any good, so we look back, constantly wishing we were young again.

Our day has passed. Another day is waiting to dawn. I wonder what it will be.