Out in the Margins

I'm tired of being marginalized by youth.

The generation that spawned the Movement, the Pill and the Betty Ford Clinic has suddenly been left blown' in the wind. Sure, our Boomer credo was "never trust anyone over 30." But that's been updated to "50 is the new 30." We're still down with it, right?

So when did the Pepsi Generation become the Pepcid Geriatrics? And when did Gen Xers become General A-to-Z, clearing bandwidth for yet another trophy on the Cloud of life?

The Xer point of view has become the gold standard by which all is evaluated. All others are auto-corrected to conform. Everything else is deemed "old school." Need an example?  Check out this car commercial.

Unearned Entitlement
It is this fruit of Boomer loins that makes me feel like I've taken the brown acid. At the heart of this bad trip is some Xers' sense of entitlement. In the workplace, that means revamping the dress code, charting their own work/play schedule and setting corporate strategy, all in the first week with a company.

It's not entitlement that brings on my flashbacks. Each of us has the right to make a mark. It's unearned entitlement that makes me want to stage a sit-in. To be earned, entitlement needs to be informed with life experience.

It's not about creating the next greatest app but about the people who use it and how it connects with the rest of their world (and the rest of the company). Steve Jobs (an old Boomer himself), understood that. It wasn't his litany of i-prefixed inventions that entitled his fame. His life experience taught him about how people connect and from that he created new ways to for people to communicate.

Don't have a body of life experience yet? Tap into those who do. Us older farts are raising our hands. We're out there just beyond the Star Wars action figures on your desk.  All we are saying is, "give experience a chance."

Resetting the Margins
But marginalization takes two parties--someone who marginalizes and someone who accepts that state. Perhaps us Boomers have dropped out when we need to tune-in again.  Challenge this new establishment with an "old" way of thinking.

My Greatest-Generation Mother used to tell me, "Wait until you get my age and you'll find out it's not so funny." Her life experience smacks me up the side of the head now.

As a generation, we've always redefined each age we become. We've changed what it means to be a citizen, a partner, a parent, an environmentalist, and now our role as an elder statesman. Surely we too can groove to this new movement (and not just the bowel kind) .