Am I allowed to be a supporter-Boomer?

I'm not one for bashing made-up cohorts, any more than I'd avoid hanging out with someone according to their astrological sign.

There are certain values that survive generational gaps.

Every older person wants every younger person to benefit from their wisdom, hard-earned through mistakes. Every younger person wishes the older person would just shut up and let them learn for themselves, because no two experiences are alike.

Courtesy, empathy, cleaning up one's own mess, respect (for what deserves respect), honesty and authenticity have no age.

The best of each generation are doing the best with what they know. What they know is usually what they've been told; very few will dig deeper.

My parents lived through a Depression and a World War. Security, security! Get a good job! To the end of her life, my mother, who seemed to live on air so little did she eat, had a fridge that groaned with food. That was her security.

My father worked a job that ground him down and drove him into alcoholism. Men of my father's generation took it for granted that supporting a family was more important than any "dreams and goals" they had. Most gave those up.

Men have acted abominably; they also unquestioningly did what was considered their "duty." Millions died defending our freedom, other millions died simply because they were told that's what they had to do. Come Vietnam, they balked.

I lived through a decade of riots, a world in uproar, watched a supremely senseless war unfold on TV, saw the summer of love end in police brutality on university campuses, and the decade descend into madness with Charles Manson. In the seventies, the Cayahuga River in Ohio caught fire. We began to wonder if this anti-pollution thing might be more than just a fad...

Recently, in the New York Times online, there was a video report of a small town in Arkansas where anti-vaxxers hold sway, and die for their stubbornness. But one young woman, a high school student, defied her parents to attend a vaccination clinic.

"We're not thinking enough about other people,' she said, quietly.

With that comment that brought me to tears, I knew that the world might yet be saved.

Just please, look up from your smartphone occasionally. I only want to see the shiny, fresh face of the future.

Deal?

DR