Tag: boomers (Page 11 of 15)

Are you a collector?

06/01/2015 / Laura

Why do we collect things?

We baby boomers and beyond love to have collections. Maybe we think it’s going to be worth a whole lot of money today. Or we really enjoy looking at magazine covers that span 50 years.

Or maybe it’s just fun. That’s a good enough reason for me.

Freud probably has another theory. But let’s not go there. And I’m not talking about hoarding, when the inability to throw something away begins to destroy lives.

I’m just talking collecting. Just about all of us do it, and in many cases, we began as children.

Did you have a big stack of comic books? Were you waiting at the store when the next Hot Wheels car came out? Do you have every concert poster from the Grateful Dead tours?

Do you secretly tape every episode of Antiques Roadshow to see if that missing piece of memorabilia you’ve been hunting forever shows up?

I think some of the things we collect take us back in time, bringing up pleasant memories of people and events we want to keep alive. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to remember how good it felt to hear your favorite band live the first time. Or be drawn to war memorabilia that still feels familiar after many years. Or maybe it’s a pattern of china that takes you back to when Mom set the table for special occasions.

It’s interesting to walk into one home and see several collections of figurines, model cars, or rare books…and then go next door and see no collections of any kind. Maybe the people who live in the Spartan home just do a better job of hiding their collections. Or maybe buying more than one of something sparks too much guilt in them and they can’t do it.

Animals collect too. Rats. Magpies. Even dogs know where their favorite chew bones are located. Cats…well, I think cats collect people. But that’s another story

Humans still win the prize for collecting the weirdest things, and no, I’m not going to list some of them. You are online; you can indulge your need to know the creepy.

The American Philatelic Society says that shortly after adhesive postage stamps were introduced by Great Britain in 1840, people began to collect them. I did this as a child. It was a great way to spend the time, and an easy way to learn the countries of the world as well as their leaders, often shown on the stamps. I still find it interesting that for so many years, stamps from even the tiniest nations were adorned in bright colors, with flowers, animals, and people on them. While American stamps were plain, unexciting and predictable.

That all changed eventually, but for many years, the U.S. won the award for boring.

As for the rich and/or famous, rumor has it Tom Hanks collects typewriters. Jan Leno of course collects cars and motorcycles. John Quincy Adams collected coins. Musician Rod Stewart is said to be crazy about model trains.

Today, I like finding original Russell Wright plates, bowls, and cups. I have a hiking hat with pins for every state in which I’ve hiked. I still pick up LPs now and then. I confess I don’t have a major serious collection of anything, though I’m related to someone who does, and all her collections give her great joy.

Great collectors love to see each other’s collections. You can go to museums, galleries, and libraries. Or you can go online to sites like The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things to see what you’ve been missing.

In his wonderful poem Hector The Collector, Shel Silverstein captures the allure of collecting:

Hector the Collector
Collected bits of string,
Collected dolls with broken heads
And rusty bells that would not ring. Bent-up nails and ice-cream sticks,
Twists of wires, worn-out tires,
Paper bags and broken bricks.
Old chipped vases, half shoelaces,
Gatlin’ guns that wouldn’t shoot,
Leaky boasts that wouldn’t float
And stopped-up horns that wouldn’t toot. Butter knives that had no handles,
Copper keys that fit no locks
Rings that were too small for fingers,
Dried-up leaves and patched-up socks.
Worn-out belts that had no buckles,
‘Lectric trains that had no tracks,
Airplane models, broken bottles,
Three-legged chairs and cups with cracks.
Hector the Collector
Loved these things with all his soul–
Loved them more then shining diamonds,
Loved them more then glistenin’ gold.
Hector called to all the people,
‘Come and share my treasure trunk!’
And all the silly sightless people
Came and looked … and called it junk.

As in anything, it’s all in the eyes of the beholder…if it brings you joy, it’s your treasure.

“There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those.”

Unknown

Wild and precious life.

05/04/2015 / Laura

Remember being a child and lying in soft green grass…looking up at clouds as they lazily drifted by…making necklaces out of clover…playing softball with makeshift bases…waiting for the ice cream truck to come by on a hot afternoon…drinking water out of the garden hose….really taking in the joy of summer, or any other day…the sights, aromas, sounds, feelings.

Long before we all learned how to be more “efficient” with our time.

Maybe it’s good to occasionally go back to those days.

Become a swan. Or a grasshopper.

It’s good to be alive. It’s good to be older. And maybe sometimes best of all, it’s good to just be. To, as poet Mary Oliver says, “know how to be idle.”

Otherwise just think of what we are missing.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

“Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

As boomers and beyond, we understand more than ever how valuable life is, and how fragile. How friends leave us. How grandchildren and nieces and nephews grow up so fast. How pets age as well and remind us we’re not so young anymore. In some ways it seems like forever since we played hopskotch or hide-and-seek in the evenings. But in other ways, it feels like yesterday.

One of the best-selling books right now is a coloring book for adults. What bliss! If you don’t believe me, go buy a new set of crayons. Open the box. Close your eyes and sniff.

Tell me that doesn’t take you back to a part of you that’s been quiet a long, long time. So go ahead. Be a grasshopper. Lie in the grass. And by all means, color outside the lines.

****(And gentle friends, in the spirit of being creative as well as efficient with your time, you may be relieved to know that RockTheWrinkle.com will now be updated weekly (as opposed to 2x a week) unless the spirit moves me otherwise. Get out there and enjoy the season!)

“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.”

John Lennon

How rudeness hurts us.

04/23/2015 / Laura

Recently I was walking my dog down a sidewalk when a 30-ish woman and her two children on bicycles and a dog approached me, taking up most of the sidewalk. My dog and I moved over as far as we could and just as we were about to pass this small group, the woman’s dog got a bit close and made my dog a bit nervous, so I pulled us even more to the side.

Instead of just passing us, or tightening her leash on her own pet, the woman yelled out in a very loud and very unfriendly voice something quite uncalled for and directed at me.

I was a bit stunned—my dog and I did nothing wrong. We had moved over to let this group pass. Why in the world would she make a public scene…and in front of her children?

Of course I had many responses in my head…things I wanted to say very badly after she walked by. But her children were with her, which stopped me.

Though quite obviously, that did not stop her.

So many times I see what I consider to be an attack of “entitlement” come over people of a particular age group. (Yes, here I am, someone over 50, shaking my wrinkled finger at someone younger while my teeth fall out.)

Not really.

I just don’t understand.

I’ve never felt entitled, or that the world owed me something, or, that anyone around me should just put up with my pets if they’re acting up. Quite the opposite.

It used to be called courtesy. Civility. A realization that while I may be special to those who love me, and special to the spirit that created me, I’m not “special” in traffic, crowds, long lines, or at the motor vehicle registration office. I’m just another person.

This seems to be a lost idea.

But wait. Didn’t Tom Wolfe call us boomers the “Me Generation” back in the 1970s? Self-centered and spoiled?

Were we? Are we still?

And is rudeness just what it is…a sign of changes in society that has nothing to do with age? Did our grandparents shake their heads and wonder what had become of manners?

It really does feel like things are a bit coarser these days, like taking the soft and forgiving road just isn’t done much. I confess to quick irritation when a driver cuts me off haphazardly or someone jumps in line ahead of me. And I’m sure negative breeds negative. And granted, as boomers and beyond, we didn’t grow up with the need (or just the temptation) to constantly be sticking our noses in electronic devices to see stock prices, weather, and funny texts…we actually interacted with those around us.

So being polite was the smart thing to do. And it’s lot easier than being rude.

In fact, according to Psychology Today, rudeness can wreck your health. Talking down to someone. Ignoring a co-worker. Being impolite. When this happens to us on a regular basis, it can lead to anxiety, depression, weight gain, heart disease, sleep problems, and digestive ailments.

And sometimes the rudeness isn’t so blunt. Like when we interrupt each other constantly. Or never show up for a date or social engagement on time. Can’t put down our cell phone when we’re supposed to be enjoying another person’s company. Laugh off another’s anxiety when he or she is revealing a deep hurt.

Research says when we do that, we’re not seeing the other person as an equal. Or we may in fact be so insecure we don’t know how else to act.

I admit I stay confused about some of this…I’ve been around such cordial strangers and seen such acts of kindness. I’ve traveled to cities where I had been warned everyone would be rude, and they were the kindest people I’ve met. And like all of us, I’ve been ignored, disrespected, and left wondering what is ailing the other person.

So maybe it comes down to realizing we don’t know what’s going on with that person; what hurt lies inside; what bad day have they had; why do they choose that behavior. Maybe we will be the only nice person they meet today (this of course assumes we are nice!). Maybe for now, let just have to let them be who they are.

And challenge ourselves to be what we can—the best version of our own self.

“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.”

Rudyard Kipling

The Road More Traveled

04/20/2015 / Laura

“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the church of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don’t improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.” John Steinbeck, opening of “Travels With Charley.”

One of my favorite books. I first read it many many years ago when I was a girl sitting outside on summer days thinking about all the places I had never seen, and how much fun it would be to just travel when I wanted without a care. I always had a kind of wanderlust, maybe because our family moved every few years, or maybe because my soul was just always looking over the horizon.

The need to keep moving, to explore the unknown—do we, as John stated so eloquently, ever really grow out of it?

Or do we just compromise, and tell that part of us to be quiet. That we have to grow up now and be “responsible.”

In “Travels With Charley”, Steinbeck does take off in an old camper he calls Rocinante with his beloved canine companion, Charley. Together the pair really does travel all over and meet all kinds of people. An excerpt:

“You going in that?”

“Sure.”

“Where?”

“All over.”

“And then I saw what I was to see so many times on the journey—a look of longing. “Lord! I wish I could go.”

“You don’t even know where I’m going.”

“I don’t care. I’d like to go anywhere.”

Are we all born with this traveling bug, but many of us lose it over time? I wonder. I never really did, though I didn’t always get to take off on grand adventures. When I finally realized it was time to start seeing the places I longed to see, I did it…and many times I just took of on my own. That really freaked out a lot of people. It still does.

Aren’t you scared? What if something happens? What if you get bored? What if you get lonely? Aren’t you terrified to go somewhere completely new?

Here’s my theory:

A few butterflies in the stomach when you do something new is good for you.
Things can “happen” at any time, no matter how many people are with you.
Traveling isn’t boring for me, unless I’m stuck in an airport terminal for hours and hours.
And loneliness? You’d be amazed how many great conversations and impromptu dinners you can have with people you just met…if you aren’t already with someone at the time.

Fear is a good thing sometimes…it warns us, keeps us alert, can save our lives if we listen. But letting fear tell you that you can’t do something can be very suffocating. Take John Steinbeck. He relates in Travels With Charley that after driving all over the United States, he actually got lost when he tried to get back home. But he found his way.

We boomers and beyond like to travel. We’ve learned to take a larger view of the world. We like new experiences. Maybe that just means driving to a state park you’ve never seen. Or going to an arts festival in a beautiful location. If you want to be alone on a trip, you can be. But if you don’t, you’ll find many opportunities to be around others.

Here’s some stats on how boomers are affecting the travel market from immersionactive.com:

36% of leisure travel is done by mature travelers
60% of American boomers have their passports
80% of boomers want to visit a place they’ve never been before
Baby boomers account for 4 of 5 dollars spent on luxury travel today
On average, older adults will take four trips per year

So hey, if you’ve always wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial, or tour the Baseball Hall of Fame, or dip your toes in the Nile, and you have the means to do it, step through your fear and give it a go. You never know where the road will lead you—and if you get lost, maybe that’s what it takes to find your way home again.