Are We Boomers Getting Lazy, or Are We Just Getting Old?

Posted on June 4, 2008 by Dave Pollard

While riding on a train going west I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad concerning myself and the first few friends I had.

With half damp eyes I stared to the room where my friends and I spent many an afternoon
Where we together weathered many a storm laughing and singing till the early hours of the morn.

By the old wooden stove where our hats were hung, our words were told, and our songs were sung
Where we longed for nothing and were satisfied joking and talking about the world outside.

With hungry hearts thru the heat and cold, we never much thought we could get very old
We thought we could sit forever in fun, while our chances really were a million to one.

As easy as it was to tell black from white, it was all that easy to tell wrong from right,
And our choices so few that the thought never hit that the one road we travelled would ever shatter and split.

Now many a year has passed and gone, many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a first friend, and each one of them I’ve never seen again.

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain that we could sit simply in that room once again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat — I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.

— Bob Dylan’s Dream

When I finished reading John Gray’s Straw Dogs, and realized that nothing we humans do can prevent the end of our civilization by the end of this century, I was immensely relieved. Even though the name of this blog is meant to be a bit ironic, I felt as if some huge, exhausting and impossible responsibility had just been lifted off my shoulders.

If I’d read the book when I was younger, I’d probably have dismissed it as an old cynic’s weary ravings. So what has changed? Have I become smarter, or lazier, or just older and more tired?

Many boomers I know have recently gone through a similar self-change. As I put it in a recent article about Intentional Communities where some members work forty hours a week or more, in the fields or in maintenance and repair work, on top of other assignments and family duties: I don’t want to work that hard.

I could have added: any more. I know men and women of my age who work as employees in one job, in often-challenging and taxing family relationships as a second ‘job’, and in volunteer or activist work as a third job. No wonder so many of my age will admit, off the record, that they have no time for sex (and some will admit it’s really not a priority for them anyway). Any more. The wage slave job. The struggle with perpetually unhappy family members. The frustration of trying to bring about political, economic and social change. It seems more and more as if it’s all more trouble than it’s worth. Is our whole generation just getting worn out?

My first thoughts on this were not terribly charitable. I think it is in our nature to be lazy. We work, most of us, only if and when we think we have to (though a number of our civilization’s guilt trips and propaganda techniques can make us feel we have to when we really don’t). Liberals and conservatives alike deplore lazyness (through they don’t agree on what that is). We are told that we get out of our lives (and relationships, and communities) only what we put into them. Loitering in many places is criminal behaviour. Idleness is “the devil’s workshop”, we are told. We are indoctrinated to believe that a good marriage (or equivalent) takes continuous hard work. That anything worth doing is worth doing well. That time is something we ‘invest’, carefully and diligently, to generate an optimal ‘return’, or else it is ‘wasted’. And a person who does not keep busy is described as indolent, a word that, tellingly, originally meant incapable of feeling pain.

Despite the propaganda, I think we (and all creatures) are inherently disinclined to do hard work. All this industry is, after all, responsible for most of the pollution, global warming, suburban sprawl and much of the other environmental destruction that is desolating our Earth. The words conservative and conservation both mean to keep things unchanged, leave things as they are.

So I was initially inclined to chalk up my boomer cohort’s growing work-fatigue (and my own) to lazyness. But if that were so, we wouldn’t have worked so hard, on so many ambitious and ultimately largely fruitless causes, when we were younger. My aversion to taking on responsibility and new commitments is a relatively new personality quirk. When I was younger I wanted more responsibility (because with it came authority) — “power to the people” meant responsibility as well, and we were ready.

It’s not that I’ve become more irresponsible or noncommittal. I still care just as much. I thought to ascribe it, then, to getting older, to having less energy. I used to love to flirt, but damn it’s hard work. And if you’re not careful, you end up with the object of your attention, some way-too-young-for-you thing, expecting more from you, and then when they open their mouth and say something really boneheaded and your eyes roll back in your head and you run for the hills and say to yourself “Whew, dodged a bullet there“. Whereas if it had happened twenty years earlier, well…

Maybe, I wondered, my current infatuation with polyamorism, and my current disdain for the cult of ‘leadership’, are just a reflection of my growing aversion to hard work. But that doesn’t make sense either. Loving a lot of people, while arguably more fun and stimulating than monogamy, takes lots of time and energy too. And if you think facilitating change is easier than leading change, then you don’t know much about either. What polyamorous love, and intelligent conversation, and living and working collaboratively in real community are (compared, say, to the alternatives of monogamy, mindless entertainments, and fighting your way up the corporate or political ladder to power, wealth and leadership) is, for most of us anyway, social, and fun.

So I thought, finally, perhaps these a-little-past-midlife crises of boomers like me are indications of neither laziness nor exhaustion (nor, for that matter, wisdom), but rather an aching desire for sociability and playfulness, long postponed after far-too-competitive, over-committed, too-individualistic and far-too-earnest young adulthood.

Maybe we just want to talk, intelligently, quietly, imaginatively, collaboratively, compassionately — instead of dedicating our lives to a cause, or a person, or the job dangled like a carrot on a stick. And maybe we want to play, not competitively or passionately, but whimsically, creatively, light-heartedly. Perhaps we are discovering our second childhood — carefree, joyful, open, attentive, accepting, egalitarian, cooperative, without responsibility, loving everyone andbeing simply amazed by everything — a little early.

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12 Responses to Are We Boomers Getting Lazy, or Are We Just Getting Old?

Siona says:

June 4, 2008 at 23:57

“When I finished reading John Gray’s Straw Dogs, and realized that nothing we humans do can prevent the end of our civilization by the end of this century, I was immensely relieved.”Just out of curiosity, what’s the difference between that line and the sentence, “When I finished reading John Gray’s Straw Dogs, and realized that nothing I do can prevent the end of my life by the end of this century, I was immensely relieved.” Is the acceptance the same? And does, with that acceptance, come a revisiting of values and priorities and questions about how to live?I like your final sentence (except maybe the ‘without responsibility’ part), but it feels to me that what you’re describing is more than childhood. To me it seems like a childhood that contains a joy heightened by a certain appreciation–one that comes through experience and the knowledge of how things could otherwise be. It’s beautiful.
Stephen Hinton says:

June 5, 2008 at 02:53

Your comments on laziness and working hours reminds me of how I used to imagine the future would be as a boy. It went something like this: machines will take over the heavy work and we will all be better off and have more free time to pursue art and personal development. But the truth is the opposite. I ask myself… with the equivalent of having thousands of slaves working for each of us 24/7 (oil) how come we are NOT working less?With all the wealth generated how come the majority are getting less? With this being the time in history where there are more educated people on Earth than there have ever been through time how come we have more war and more starving than ever before?And with all the development of economic, logistic and social theory, that we live in such a round-about living arrangement where food has to go through hundreds of steps to reach your table, maybe including being sent to China for processing and Poland for packaging before it travels thousands of miles by truck via various distribution channels and then you have to get in your car to go get it? My conclusion: either someone is doing it deliberately simply because it makes money for them or we are just letting ourselves get royally screwed over by the living arrangements that develop mindlessly.But my reaction is not one of guilt that I am not working hard enough to change. It is one of being grateful for the life I have and time I am alive in this very beautiful place they call life on Earth. Let us do what we can.
Dave Smith says:

June 5, 2008 at 09:03

I’m with you there, Dave. I recently created a big new project and dawdled (hey, now there’s a timely boomer word) along on it until a much younger friend jumped in and ran with it. In the past, I would have considered the project mine, and would have tried to control and direct the new energy, but I just smiled and let go and felt content that it will find its way in the world without much help from me…Dave
Anonymous says:

June 5, 2008 at 16:03

thanks for bringing this to my day. Art, poetry and song reaches in and touches/ignites the awe in life
Dave Pollard says:

June 5, 2008 at 17:39

Thanks Siona, Stephen, Dave. Siona: Thanks for the ’37Days’ question, which would certainly change my priorities and agenda if I could get my head around it :-) And being without responsibility is not the same as being irresponsible.Dave: The times they are a’changin my friend ;-)
Siona says:

June 5, 2008 at 20:28

I know. That ‘getting one’s head around it’ is a real bear, hm? ;)
Beth Patterson says:

June 5, 2008 at 22:17

I think that not pulling back from the workaday world is what can keep us from moving into the next stage of life (in the Hindu model it’s the ‘forest-dweller’). Beginning to relinquish our death-grip on expectations and earnestness, we begin to prepare for elderhood and the integration of our life wisdom. How can leaning into that be called lazy? It’s doing very different work on a level that is more subtle.
Phil says:

June 5, 2008 at 23:03

As I approach 60 my most valuable asset is time and I am more inclined to devote that time to what I want to do rather than what the “Man” might see as being more important. Sometimes this might be just doing nothing and if that makes me lazy so be it. I also remember being told back in the day that as time went on we would be doing less work and spending more time pursuing our own interests and I’ve taken that road with enthusiasm. On my death bed I won’t regret taking this road.
Jon Husband says:

June 6, 2008 at 13:08

Interesting and reflective post, with which I beg to disagree (but only on a personal basis). I LIKE to work hard, but only on things that I think are useful or will have a meaning whereby I feel I have made a positive contribution .. including gardening, gathering stuff, fixing stuff, etc. I think it’s good for my soul … and clearly I cannot speak for anyone else, but I have a vague suspicion that more than a few people might also feel that way.
Karen Crone says:

June 6, 2008 at 17:05

I am finding myself nodding my head. Not really the “Amen” sort of nodding, but the “I-am-confronted-with-wisdom-from-someone-on-the-path-ahead-of-me” sort of nodding. I am here a lot. I am still in the service phase of my life. I am passionate about my nursing career. I am involved and proud to raise my young children. And these things that I do are important for me to do, I think. Developmentally. They are the experiences that will gain me the perspective to one day be where you are, knowing what you are knowing about another way to experience my life and another way to contribute.I work, mostly, with people who are dying or fighting not to die. You can imagine they provide me with a whole bunch of perspective. And what I think is that, while activism and accomplishments are an aspect of our identity, what we really need, what we want to know in the end, what will be our legacy, is that we had PASSION, and that we found a way to be true to it. I have this in my face every day. Still, it is so easy to get caught in the rat race. I truly appreciate what you have said. Thanks for finding another way to remind me.
Melisa Christensen says:

June 6, 2008 at 21:35

you put monogamy, mindless entertainments, and fighting your way up the corporate or political ladder to power, wealth and leadership all in the same sentence… thought provoking. Laziness is an interesting phenomenon. It seems that our only real purpose, like most animals, is to try to survive. Like most animals, when we have our nests built and food stored for the winter, it is time to play. Maybe our ability to plan so far ahead in the future is the real vice. To set goals so far ahead that the we change before the time comes to see their completion. Like monogamy, or a career or paying off a house for our whole life. Laziness seems like a negative way of saying Fun.
Barbara W. Klaser says:

June 7, 2008 at 23:34

I had a colleague once whose favorite joke when things didn’t go right on a project was, “I feel so much better since I gave up hope.” But in fact I think there’s a point in our lives when we realize that acceptance of what we can’t change is wisdom, and then our lives change gears for the better. Those who haven’t seen the wisdom in that might call it laziness.I have a problem with the word “lazy” in that it’s a catchall and nearly always seen as negative. More and more I wonder if there’s really any such thing as laziness, other than the ability and wisdom to slow down and take life in — which I view as a positive trait, a kind of thrifty respect for life — one’s own as well as everyone else’s. Most of the other people society looks at as lazy are dealing with dysfunction or challenged in some way not in their control. Those who’ve made a conscious choice to slow down and value each day — not for what they can produce to make someone rich or to “fix” the wrongs of the world, but for what life means in the greater scheme of things — are likely in the “boomer” age group.Younger people think they have to put up with an employer’s self-absorption, ambition, or greed, but many boomers have wised up and see it for what it is, and they aren’t going to wait for years to “prove” themselves to yet another of this kind of employer. Life’s too short. We see this as ageism, and in a way it is. But it’s not so much a conscious “I don’t want to hire older people” as it is the employer recognizing on some level that the older employee isn’t going to take the same crap that younger workers think they have to in order to advance.I think if more business people looked at the whole person they were hiring, with respect, and were willing to honor the whole person from day one, we’d see more boomers become valued, seasoned workers again who were willing to put up with employment. I personally think it’s easier to work for someone else than to run my own business. I really don’t want the headache of making a whole business work. I’m willing to do a good job for someone I respect who will treat me with respect. (Though I also find that now I don’t want the commitment of fulltime employment.) Unfortunately business seems to be more and more about self-centered control and greed and less about the human beings employed — or the customers, in my recent experience. It doesn’t surprise me if many boomers would rather not buy into that form of madness, especially to work 50- or 60-hour weeks yet again. It’s also the reason I try to take my business, as a consumer, to where I see contented employees.