My idea of planning ahead is buying a banana that won't be ripe til Tuesday. But I'm open to suggestions. I love the Dennis Hopper ads, urging Boomers to get a plan. I'm basically a Boomer still casting around for new prospects, still checking out monster.com and the Peace Corps every once in awhile, still daydreaming about a pied a terre in the city, still hoping to get organized some day down the road. I pay bills when I think of it or find them in my car. I go to the post office at five minutes to five. I invite ten people for dinner two hours before meal time. I like things this way. But now in my dotage I'm loosening up, losing my touch for pulling it off quite as smoothly as I used to. My ADD kicks in, and a touch of mad cow. I forget the stamps. I forget the dessert. I get flustered. I'm willing to consider some modifications to the laissez-faire approach of my youth, in light of some disintegrating executive skills that could use a boost.
John Lennon sang that life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. My youthful response to this was to waste no time planning. I knew all about what paved the road to hell and the things that happen to the best laid plans. So I placed my bets on the moment. Be here now. Carpe diem. Too bad old habits die so hard.
They say that the ability to plan ahead is a mark of intelligence that separates us from the lower beasts. Enthusiastic studies have shown that apes can plan ahead and gather tools for future use. I can barely grocery shop. I come home with meat and no vegetables, cereal and no milk. I think maybe there's some at home, but then there's not. That may be more a function of memory, but memory and a plan have to go hand in hand, at least part of the way. How can you plan ahead unless you remember what it is you need to accomplish?
Some people might think it's a sad state of affairs that I am proud of myself for buying a couple of greenish bananas. But no! I feel in control, responsible, curiously glamorous, and I imagine that the cashier, or maybe that handsome guy behind me, looks on admiringly as I place my ginkgo biloba and almonds up there with the oatmeal and blueberries. Back in the day, when I first got my driver's license at age 16, I made sure to run errands for my mother, and clunk my keys around loudly at the check-out stand of the grocery store, showing off. Now I plop those green bananas out there with just as much attitude. Look at this all you people out there...I can think ahead with the best of them! I've got a plan! So mind your own business.
I am wondering if those folks at Ameriprise are all as cool as Dennis Hopper, and if they have any ideas about what I should have for dinner.
Showing posts with label Dennis Hopper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dennis Hopper. Show all posts
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Hurlyburly
Been there and done that? Love the Dennis Hopper ads about hanging on to your dreams? Still love the music and all the folks who are hanging in there? But do you ever feel those pearly gates getting closer and start to think that it's too late, that we missed the boat, that we're on the way out, that Georgie-Porgie made us cry and that with the upcoming presidential election and our aging bodies and minds- this isn't shaping up to be any Age of Aquarius?
The new generations, our offspring, mind you, are doing fine. They've outdone us in certain ways, they've had the fruits of our labors to spur them on. But they're curious about us. They (occasionally) want us to share what we know- especially from the safe distance of a blog, and not when we have them trapped in our car.
We remember when cyberspace was just a dream, the next generation is immersed in it. We sought to be authentic and to change the world, they wonder what exactly we mean by that. Most of them will never know what it was like to start things from scratch the way we did: to learn reading, writing, 'rithmetic, get a classical education, to think in broad terms of distinct civilizations and cultures. Social policies have subtly altered some of the most fundamental learning processes and are almost surely affecting evolutionary patterns. Genealogy charts are interesting, but to what end? It's a brave new world, a glorious mish-mash. There's been a mutation in mankind, don't you think? It's hard to define, but whatever it is, it would show up on a graph a million years from now.
We're different from the dignified WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors who have sat and reminisced for Steven Spielberg and other documentarians- We are Vietnam-era, issue-sensitized, drug-culture survivors. It definitely doesn't have the same ring. Nowhere near as many WWII vets ended up drug-addled and overly tattooed on Harleys or blank-eyed in wheelchairs at Saturday flea markets. God knows, many dignified Vietnam vets have exemplary, successful and fulfilling lives and may drive Harleys and work flea markets, but you know of the ones who didn’t feel like heroes, and didn’t succeed. The unfortunate stereotype is out there. And how do you think our Iraq veterans will fare as the years unfold? If the scenes and stories of neglected veterans at Walter Reed Hospital are any indication, we're not learning from our mistakes.
For all its strengths, our boomer generation has been strident and self-righteous at times. Some of us got cheapened and weakened - albeit temporarily-by our culture, by some of our shrill and misguided liberal policies, by the assassination of our beautiful young leaders, and by a relaxation into faithlessness and a consequent lack of discipline that nearly lost us the battle of our lives. But we had the best music, didn't we? And so many of our musicians are still kickin' and inspiring new generations. Wasn't it Mick Jagger who once said that people over forty may as well die? If so, he sure changed his mind about that! He's struttin' and frettin' his hours upon the stage, mighty strong and alive as he nears 65, doing us all proud.
Youth won't marginalize us if we use their tools to go on helping to broaden their worlds. We can still leave so much behind, even just sitting at our computers- whether we have blood-pressure meds and anti-coagulants on the shelf, or running shoes and turmeric. Step into the hurly-burly.
The new generations, our offspring, mind you, are doing fine. They've outdone us in certain ways, they've had the fruits of our labors to spur them on. But they're curious about us. They (occasionally) want us to share what we know- especially from the safe distance of a blog, and not when we have them trapped in our car.
We remember when cyberspace was just a dream, the next generation is immersed in it. We sought to be authentic and to change the world, they wonder what exactly we mean by that. Most of them will never know what it was like to start things from scratch the way we did: to learn reading, writing, 'rithmetic, get a classical education, to think in broad terms of distinct civilizations and cultures. Social policies have subtly altered some of the most fundamental learning processes and are almost surely affecting evolutionary patterns. Genealogy charts are interesting, but to what end? It's a brave new world, a glorious mish-mash. There's been a mutation in mankind, don't you think? It's hard to define, but whatever it is, it would show up on a graph a million years from now.
We're different from the dignified WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors who have sat and reminisced for Steven Spielberg and other documentarians- We are Vietnam-era, issue-sensitized, drug-culture survivors. It definitely doesn't have the same ring. Nowhere near as many WWII vets ended up drug-addled and overly tattooed on Harleys or blank-eyed in wheelchairs at Saturday flea markets. God knows, many dignified Vietnam vets have exemplary, successful and fulfilling lives and may drive Harleys and work flea markets, but you know of the ones who didn’t feel like heroes, and didn’t succeed. The unfortunate stereotype is out there. And how do you think our Iraq veterans will fare as the years unfold? If the scenes and stories of neglected veterans at Walter Reed Hospital are any indication, we're not learning from our mistakes.
For all its strengths, our boomer generation has been strident and self-righteous at times. Some of us got cheapened and weakened - albeit temporarily-by our culture, by some of our shrill and misguided liberal policies, by the assassination of our beautiful young leaders, and by a relaxation into faithlessness and a consequent lack of discipline that nearly lost us the battle of our lives. But we had the best music, didn't we? And so many of our musicians are still kickin' and inspiring new generations. Wasn't it Mick Jagger who once said that people over forty may as well die? If so, he sure changed his mind about that! He's struttin' and frettin' his hours upon the stage, mighty strong and alive as he nears 65, doing us all proud.
Youth won't marginalize us if we use their tools to go on helping to broaden their worlds. We can still leave so much behind, even just sitting at our computers- whether we have blood-pressure meds and anti-coagulants on the shelf, or running shoes and turmeric. Step into the hurly-burly.
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