Grandchildren Are a Blessing

Grandchildren are the reward you get for not strangling your teenagers!  LOL

What's GRAND about Getting OLDER?

YES.  It takes longer to wake up.

You thought it would never happen to you, but certain other things take longer too.

Mornings are shorter.  Good sleep is harder to find.  The ground keeps getting further away.  Your joints ache when the weather changes.    

Getting older means you have more time to think about things.  If you had the chance to go back, you would do a few things differently.  You may start to really feel the waning of physical strength or mental acuity.

But... then... all of a sudden... oh precious wonder...   Along comes the next generation.

As amazing as it seems to your children, you now know a thing or two more than you did "way back then".   You want to love these little bundles more than correct them.  You want to teach gently instead of with corporal authority.  You are less hurried and demanding of these little miracles than last time you claimed one as your own.

You have become wise.  You cherish the naked joy in a baby's smile.  You have time and money to spend on things that are important.  The awakened joy of "Generativity" comes from somewhere deep in your soul.  

Where you were once like a sapling tree shadowed under the leaves and branches of the OLD ONES who came before, you are now growing in the space they are starting to leave behind.  More than ever, you know how much they did to protect you until you were ready.

You also know you matter because the next generation matters.  And you can help!  Now you begin to understand the GRAND FACTOR!

As Baby Boomers age, and enter this stage of life, they do it differently than previous generations.  The impact of these differences is reverberating through our economy in something called the Great Recession.  It STEAMROLLS through governments and businesses.  Some of these institutions don't quite know what to make of us now.  But that's OK.  We create our social and political structures.  We made these - and they grew to tower over younger and newer ideas.  But these old ideas also start to fade in their power.  That's OK because, we can make them again when we take our own turn as the giants of the forest.

America is still a young child in the global scheme of things, and we are it's Parents - at least in a certain way.  It's going to be an interesting ride when the GRAND GENERATION finishes getting over being older and starts taking up the challenge of BEING GRAND!

  

Hello World

Yes, I am a Boomer.  Baby Boomer that is.  That means I was born between 1946 and 1964.  I was taught various values and opinions by the generation that came before. Some of it was true and worked, and some needed to be tossed.  We experimented with flower power, public protests, recreational drugs and free love.  We went to war and died overseas for reasons nobody fully understood.  We "Tuned in - Turned on - Dropped out".

Then we came to our senses.  It took real work to pay for a car, and a place to live.  We took jobs in business or on Wall Street and started to sound a lot like the conservatives we once railed against.  But then again, something was different.  We developed a passion and tolerance for personal freedom and self expression that no other generation dared to live out.  This blog is about what that means today and in the next few decades in the world of commerce, politics, religion, even city planning and other seemingly mundane subjects.  It will be a book some day.  My first, most likely.

Baby Boomers have transformed almost every concept once held about how aging, health and how markets work.  We have been revolutionary at age 30 Something, 40 Something, and the like.  Now we are entering an age of being Grandparents and even retiring.  Being 50 Something or 60 Something today has no resemblance to those life stages in former generations.  Our passage through these Grand Years will transform America, Politics, Entertainment, and Business in ways that might again be unexpected.  

What do I mean by this?  Well.... when I became a Grandfather for the first time, I noticed that certain values and opinions about life, work, and especially PARENTING changed remarkably.  It was almost overnight.  This experience was the one that first gave me the idea that there was a "GRAND FACTOR".  Something happens when you are more at ease with yourself and the world.  It has to do with being one step removed from the daily grind.    

I am now I am preparing for the last 10 or 15 years of my work life.  I have started to think about retirement and what kind of retirement I want.  I have visions that are like the previous generation in some ways, but not like them at all in others.  This blog will identify and detail the ways in which Baby Boomers may change the world, all over again, as they move through the GRAND years of their lives. 

When I observe our present economy, and how it fails to fit Macro-Economic models developed based on data from previous generations, I am struck by how my generation behaves differently than those that came before.  The Grand Generation has more disposable income than the teen market.  We don't buy what you think we do.  We want things you would never imagine if you belong to a previous generation or a newer one.  

I want to explore and share on this topic when I write my first book.  It will be called THE GRAND FACTOR:  How Baby Boomers Will Change the World - AGAIN!

so...  Hello World!