Signed,

Scared in Secaucus

This is an excellent question. With so much bitching about our youth culture, too little is said about the responsibility of the aging to remain relevant and make ourselves useful. I'm not saying that teeny boppers should run the world. Nor am I saying that old folks should be dressing up like Lady Gaga for the Early Bird special.

What I am saying is that IF you're getting up there in years, and IF you want to remain mainstream, you can't expect Madame Progress to hold the door for you while you get your Pampers out of storage.

Now that balding boomers like David Caruso (and myself) are becoming the majority in our culture, it's imperative for us to figure out where we belong - and where we DON'T - on the cultural landscape. We should not be fooled into believing that our arsenal of anti-aging ploys, from Viagra, to cosmetic surgery, to fitness fascism, to parterning with The Young (listen up, Cougars and Chicken Hawks) will give us any authentic claim on our own lost youth. It is narcissistic, bogus, and spiritually damaging to cling to what is no longer ours.

The trouble is that we - the aging - have yet to create a bona fide niche for ourselves in a forward-looking society. We continue to expect younger people to defer to us, to make way for us, to feel sorry for us, to overlook our stuck-in-the-mudness or sheer inappropriateness for jobs better suited for those half our age. It is time for aging Baby Boomers to stop whining! It is time for us to GET REAL. Not only must we work harder to keep up with things like new technology (or be left in the pre-digital dustbin), remain curious and willing to learn new tricks; we must also stop striving for prizes that don't belong to us and turn, instead, toward a new zone - the Boomer Zone - where assets like wisdom and experience are more highly valued than a Justin Bieber hairline and washboard abs.

Peter Pan (and Pollyanna) must die, which means accepting reality. The single most important change we must make is to stop fighting the aging process. We must stop pining for halcyon days when we were the breeding class. We must reject ubiquitous messages to wage war on time, wrinkles, and death. We must stop judging ourselves by ridiculous (overly youthful) standards, and locate a sense of humor - PLEASE - about our new station in life. As the poet Elizabeth Bishop wrote in her wonderful poem One Art:

"The art of losing isn't hard to master"

That is, if we are willing to grow up. Too many of us middle-agers are caught in the Groucho Marx dilemma of not wanting to belong to the club that will have us as members (the club of people who remember Mel Torme).

For underneath our blaming of the young for feeling left out, overlooked, and undervalued, is a reservoir of self-loathing and self-rejection. This toxic dump in the middle-aged psyche must first be drained if we want the rest of the world to embrace us. This is an inside job. No one can make you feel old and worthless if you believe you're a gift to the world. Saccharine as it may sound, it is absolutely true.

Mark (aka The Ethical Guerrilla)

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