In recent weeks I’ve tackled the zip wire experience at Killiecrankie and also become a fledgling motor biker.
These events could be classed as the onset of a mid-life crisis but I prefer to think of them as exploring new horizons.
Maybe late developers of the world should unite to form our own club.
I resist any temptation to put folk in pigeon holes by virtue of the number of years under their belt.
But recently I’ve seen it suggested that a generation war is looming by some aggrieved younger folk who think the current generation (referred to as baby boomers) have enjoyed the kind of life of ease which royalty might live, while things get ever tougher for them.
‘There have always been generational divisions’
Let me disabuse them of that notion because it’s as off beam as a compass needle next to a magnet.
There have always been generational divisions from the hippies at Woodstock to the present day, where there’s a sense from some younger activists that anyone over 50 is taking up valuable oxygen and water supplies.
Narrow minds and stilted thinking aren’t a function of age.
I’ve worked beside folk who weren’t long out of university who’d settled for the pipe and carpet slippers in their mid-20s.
Ten minutes in their company had the same effect on me as a Mogadon tablet on an insomniac.
Equally I’ve met 60 and 70 year olds bursting with vitality and insatiably curious in their approach to life.
In the battle of ideas it’s often assumed by some youngsters that those with a grey hair or three are rooted firmly in a past in which everything was better, and that they have little to offer in the future.
It comes as a blow to discover there’s very little that’s new under the sun and that someone long since departed, or now a relative codger, discovered it or thought about it first.
I had a conversation recently with a bloke four decades my junior who was banging on about a citizen’s basic wage being the way forward.
I’m in agreement and always have been with the idea but when I pointed out to him that the great English radicals Tom Paine and Thomas Spence were advocating such a scheme 230 years ago, his face resembled Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream.
I admit zipping across the River Garry 100 feet in the air on a steel wire is more unnerving than in my fearless teens when immortality seemed assured.
‘Misguided ageist picture’
Also, learning to clutch and use a foot brake on a 125cc motor bike in busy city traffic, having been a confirmed automatic twist and go Vespa scooter man previously, is daunting, but it shows there’s a fresh challenge waiting to be tackled for us all, assuming we’re open minded.
It’s the privilege of youthful naivety to believe that your parents and the oldies know nothing.
As the famous American author Mark Twain observed: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
“But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years”
The life experiences of many who aren’t in the first flush of youth are seen by some fledglings with constricted minds as worthless.
Smashing wee ride out today to Backwater Dam and onto Kirriemuir for coffee and ice cream, with the A92 club. 40 scooters taking advantage of the fine weather. pic.twitter.com/qlCMgHNm4Q
— Jim Spence (@JimSpenceDundee) July 18, 2021
That broad brush approach needs to find a fresh canvas because it paints a misguided ageist picture.
Just as there are indeed some crotchety older folk who wail at the way things are now, there are also younger folks who are as devoid of energy and vision as some of their elders are of curiosity.
The term ‘baby boomer’ has come to describe a generation who allegedly lived in a land of milk and honey.
That will come as a surprise to the great many that toiled long and hard for buttons in dirty and thankless jobs, and found that their reward was a miserable and niggardly old age pension.
The boomer generation understood the idea of collectivism and fought hard for those rights which they enjoy today.
There’s little value in dividing the generations on the basis of any inequality between them.
‘Hard graft at the coal face’
There are obviously levels existing depending on family and personal circumstances, but there are some folk harbouring a streak of envy at the supposed benefits which have accrued to an older generation.
Those benefits which do exist weren’t delivered to them on a plate.
They arrived, by and large, through fighting for them and putting in 40 years plus at the coal face with hard graft.
That said, there’s much needing to be done to ensure that the hardwired human desire to see an improvement in the next generation’s lot is achieved.
A major programme of affordable housing is required for many young folk in danger of being excluded from the market or paying wildly over the odds for it.
There’s also a requirement to ensure youngsters get as wide a range of educational training and opportunities as possible to prepare them for a rapidly changing economic landscape and working environment.
Those who want to play the generation jealousy game though need to think again.
In doing so they’re criticizing their own mums, dads, aunties and uncles and grandparents who are responsible for many of the fundamental rights which we all enjoy and take for granted today.
