Baby Boom Bull

It is a story written for my generation, the boomers.

You've seen the commercial. Dennis Hopper appears on the beach telling us dreams don't retire. Then comes the sales pitch from a company that sells "financial planning." It turns out that there are complaints filed in many states concerning what these planners do with your money, but that's not my concern here today.

(My only investment advice is to consider why the people who invest your money are called "brokers.")

No, the point of the sermon today is that we're full of bull, we boomers.

We think we're never going to die. At an age decades beyond that at which -- we once insisted imperiously -- people could not be trusted, we still think we're still young.

Half of us have become clever opportunists, in one way or another lent our support to the odd war here and there, built our nest eggs alongside the gurus of insider trading, told ourselves that we were not really betraying our ideals as we sold out. The other half of us stayed in the movements through Reaganian darkness, the slick Clintonian centrist con, the gilded-age Bush rape of the world, watching the world of our dreams vanish before beginning.

This was not the way it was supposed to turn out.

So here we are, 50-ish, kids flown the coop or about to, spouse or partner gone. So we have choices, if we are lucky, if our sellout or agitprop didn't catch up with us.

Science tells us we could live to 100. Ye gods!

A trip abroad, a new relationship won't change anything, certainly not a new car. Maybe it's time to start that one last meaningful life project, whatever it is.

Maybe it's time to put the bull out to pasture.