Life is not about the trending fashion. The latest catch phrase. The cute cat video that pops up every 5 minutes.

Life is not how much money you make. Or how you display that with the biggest house, fanciest car, grandest vacation or sparkling gold bracelets.

It’s not who you know.

Where you studied.

Which team you played on.

Life is messy. Unshaven. Interruptive. Inconvenient.

Life is a friend’s house burning to the ground in the middle of the night. Life is someone you love getting a very bad diagnosis and being very scared. It’s sitting up at 3 a.m. wondering how you’re going to put food on the table and also pay a sky-high medical bill. It’s a disabled Veteran in pain spending hours just trying to see a physician.

It isn’t how many likes you get on Facebook.

It isn’t being seen in the hippest new nightspot.

It isn’t parking your gigantic vehicle as close to the door of a business so everyone can see it (and have to walk around it).

It’s remembering that sweet neighbor who now lives in assisted living with no one to visit her or tell her happy birthday. It’s pushing your lawn mower a few yards down the street to cut the grass for someone you don’t know. It’s taking extra flowers with you to a cemetery so you can put some on long-forgotten graves of strangers.

But sometimes, life is also about standing still. Quiet. Taking a breath and not getting even when someone is surprisingly rude to you.

The world around us isn’t very gentle these days. The loudest voices are those who scream their views, who shake their fists, who forget that none of that helps. Too much information. Not enough asking questions, investigating the source, ascertaining the truth.

There’s a disturbing rudeness to the dialog that demeans us all.

We boomers must know better—or at least we should. We’ve seen just about everything in our lives, and we’ve come through it all. For sure we’ve learned that flash and glitz and riches don’t make the tiniest difference when life really happens…when it hurts, disappoints, terrifies or just seems to be moving on without us.

Surely over the years we’ve also learned that listening…really hearing and absorbing what is going on, what is being said or even what is not being said, is much more important than our clever response.

Everyone has a choice about how they go through life, who they help, what they spend their money on, how they interact with those around them. But sometimes, all a person can do to honor someone else is to do nothing…at least in that moment.

Be quiet and let them speak. Let them be different. Let them rave if that will help dispel the rage.

Let them be. Let them live and let live.

Will it change the world? Maybe it will just change your corner of the world. But you can be that ripple in the universe, the butterfly’s wings that affect the entire planet. It has to start somewhere.

It could start with you. With all of us baby boomers.

We have the power to do so much.

And sometimes, we find the courage to do the biggest thing we can do for someone—just be there.

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”

Omar Khayyam

“Keep looking up. That’s the secret of life.” Snoopy