2 Boomers 3.0
committed as ever to thinking, acting, and appearing young. Some millen-
nials perhaps wish their parents’ generation would get out of the way and
move on to greener pastures ( just as boomers wished), but this simply isn’t
going to happen.
Much of the commentary about the aging of boomers understandably
revolves around the difference between them and the “greatest genera-
tion.” The defining moments in boomers’ parents’ generation was the
Depression, World War II, and postwar conformity—events or cultural
phenomena that perhaps made them old before their time. Boomers’
defining moments were events or cultural phenomena like Woodstock,
protests against the Vietnam War, and the counterculture—things that one
could say are making them “young before their time.” “60 is the new 50”
and other such age-based aphorisms are silly, I believe, as numbers should
just stay out of the equation, but there is some truth to the idea that boom-
ers look, act, and feel younger than their chronological years. Boomers are
clearly redefining older age as they fl ood into their 60s and 70s, challeng-
ing prevailing notions about what “seniors” should be doing at that stage
in their lives. Through physical and mental exercises, Eastern philoso-
phies, and the power trio of sex, drugs, and roll, this fi rst chapter shows,
boomers are illustrating what the third stage of life can be about. Boomers
may never truly get “old,” at least in the way that we have traditionally
defined that term, a legacy of their lifelong bond with youth. Given the
revolutionary ways in which baby boomers are aging, this is a historic
moment, we all should realize, and another contribution boomers have
made to society.
OPPORTUNITY
Speak to boomers as if they were still young (at heart).
ANTIAGING
“What a drag it is getting old,” Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote in
their song “Mother’s Little Helper” about a half century ago, perhaps not
anticipating how much fun life could be as septuagenarians. (In July 2016,
72-year-old Jagger was reportedly delighted to learn that his 29-year-
old ballerina girlfriend was pregnant with his child—his eighth.) Not
just mothers but grandmothers (and grandfathers) are taking lots of little
