Ok, I’ve never quite understood the whole “insult” thing between Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) and everyone who came after us: Gen Xers and Millennials, or Generation Z (Wikipedia). I read that there is a new generation called Generation Alpha (2010-2024) because they ran out of alphabet letters and had to start over. See how easy that was? We can categorize people into boxes with labels and immediately know who they are.

I wish that life were that simple.

I was born in 1948, and you can say it was a helluva year. Look it up. Well, that can be said about any year since World War II. So, I, as a boomer, don’t have a monopoly on incredible life-changing historical events in the year I was born. We could quickly point to 1954, 1963, 1968, 1984, 1990, 2000, 2001, or hell, 2016, 2020, 2021, and let’s not forget 2025. You get the picture.

With that in mind, I’ve tried to understand what it is that makes people think they can judge who I am by assigning cultural and moral values to me, saying, “All you boomers are alike.” Do you want me to discuss your demographic generation in that manner?

Look, the truth is that every generational demographic is impacted by the times in which they are raised. We all take what we learn from previous generations, mix it with our own experiences, and somehow live our individual lives without categorizing and labeling everything we do. We just do it. It only becomes a thing when the media, scholars, and people with too much time on their hands start this whole “analysis” thing, and they think it’s all figured out.

I especially like the part where I’m told by my sons, one a so-called Gen X’er and the other a so-called Millennial, that I don’t understand or will never understand or can’t understand because I come from THAT generation…you know, Boomers. I particularly love that, according to some experts, I belong to the MAGA generation. That generation that apparently can’t help themselves becoming more conservative as they get older and before they get committed to a nursing home will have one more go at blasting America back to the Stone Age (before 1954) when men were men and women were women, and everybody (who the hell is everybody?) else knew their place, wherever that is.

I admit that as I approach the 77, my life outlook has been tempered by a lifetime of experience shaped by victories, mistakes, alcohol, drugs, three marriages, two live-in relationships, countless addresses too many to remember in New York, Washington, D.C., Middletown, New York, Hartford, Connecticut, Los Angeles, and now Long Beach, California. I’ve traveled the world for work and pleasure, working with incredible people of every generational demographic, learning so many things that I can’t list them all.

Every day of my life, from childhood to now, has been a lesson to be discovered. And trust me when I tell you that I used every one of those days to learn a lesson. These lessons have shaped my worldview, so I genuinely believe you would find it challenging to pigeonhole me into any generational pigeonhole.

For most of my work life, I have worked with people much younger than me or with more experienced people, and I adopted them as my mentors. I learned from both. I also shared a few lessons of my own with both. But this debate over intergenerational conflict isn’t just about life experience, moral values, or politics. It’s about who is the NOW generation.

I’ve heard more than a few people disparage those “old” people who seem not willing to let go of the power they hold as tightly as that clam that won’t budge to open (wait, give me a moment, and I’ll come up with a better metaphor). You get the picture. And they would be right. Whoever they are.

I often think about these intergenerational conflicts and try to put them in context because there are so many other conflicts, from race to gender to class to religion to ideology, that it seems that those attempts to simplify everything so that it can be captured in a meme or a TikTok video are just weak. Sorry, life isn’t that simple. If there is anything I’ve learned, it’s that life is complicated- PERIOD. That’s what I love about life—the complexity.

The effort to navigate the complexities of living, learning from people, one-on-one or in groups, and watching the world through eyes that have seen much and yet not enough. Of course, there are some things I would rather not learn or experience—you know, WAR, famine, a heart attack, and Trump again as President. There’s a longer list. Life experiences that I haven’t yet experienced will add to my worldview and keep me from slipping into these oversimplified generational definitions that may make life for others easier to fathom, but don’t add anything to their lives.

So next time anyone gets the urge to disparage the demographic category before or after them (I think you’re allowed to knock your generation if you care to), stop and ask yourself, what can I learn from them? What have they contributed to the dialogue? Do we share similar ambitions, like a peaceful but sometimes exciting life where the mystery of living is revealed, and you get one more chance to do it again the next day?

Now, that’s something this Boomer can rally around.