I like to run a couple times a week, usually on Sleepy Eye\u2019s lake trail or a gravel road. This time of year, when the great outdoors isn\u2019t so great, I sometimes use the track at Vogel Arena. I was there, pushing one foot ahead of the other. A ten minute-a-mile pace is a fading memory. But I feel good about myself if I can stay upright and moving forward.<\/p>\n
Suddenly over my shoulder, I felt a runner draw even. Shoosh, he was past and out ahead. I went from the feeling of momentum to the sensation of being a fence post alongside the road. It was a young man, maybe a Martin Luther College student. He wasn\u2019t sprinting. Like me, he was going at a nice, easy pace. Only his nice, easy pace was a thoroughbred to my plow horse.<\/p>\n
As he shooshed past me a few more times on the oval track, I thought how effortless it looked. The young man was gliding through space, arms and legs slicing the air. It occurred to me I was admiring his youth, a little jealous. Mostly I was impressed. That vitality is a gift that none of us appreciates when we\u2019re young. As we age, we can try to stay in shape. But we can never reclaim the kind of vigor from when our parts were new.<\/p>\n
I thought about our different perspectives. I can look at someone that age and have recollections of being 19 or 20. He could look at me but have no idea of what it\u2019s like to be 63, soon 64. Neither could I at his age. We know the road we\u2019ve travelled but can\u2019t know the road ahead.<\/p>\n[ad id=”113688″]\n
Humans like to put things in categories, boxes in our mind. In a world that is constantly changing, it is comforting to sort things. Sociologists sort by generations. We\u2019re all amateur sociologists. I was born in the middle of the Baby Boom. Given our volume, we Baby Boomers have had a large effect economically, culturally, and every other way. Now we are moving into our\u00a0\u201cGolden Years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n My children fill out perfectly the Millennial Generation, Anna born in 1981, Ezra in 1996. My running partner at Vogel Arena is of Generation Z. I\u2019m not sure who gets to name these, but the labels stick. As I move toward Medicare, I find it engaging to talk with Millennials and Gen Z\u2019ers. It\u2019s interesting to see how a young mind processes the world as I recall how I did the same.<\/p>\n Not to be morbid, but we Boomers will begin exiting the stage in the decades ahead. We hope to be useful citizens of this planet as long as possible. But most of the mark we will leave behind has been drawn; we can begin to reflect on our legacy. Now is the time we should be passing off the best we can to those who will remain.<\/p>\n There is a way this should work. As we move past raising children and wind down careers, while we\u2019re still physically able, these should be the time we have the most to offer our world before we take leave. Past the years when the pressures of job and parenting can overwhelm, we should be in a place where we are more patient and understanding. We\u2019ve been through it; we know what they\u2019re going through.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t always go well.\u00a0\u201cGeneration Gap\u201d<\/span>\u00a0can refer to tensions between old and young. A modern variation on that theme is\u00a0\u201cOK Boomer.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0You see that on t-shirts and internet memes poking fun at my age peers. As in,\u00a0\u201cOK Boomer with your old ideas, get out of the way now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n A couple years ago, our congressional race came down to small number of votes. The winner was proudly an echo of the president. There are some ugly things in his background that he claims were written as humor, although mocking women and minorities isn\u2019t necessarily funny.<\/p>\n He won by a margin in Brown County that was the difference. The next morning my daughter called. Not much in jest, she said,\u00a0\u201cDad. It\u2019s your fault. Old, white guys from Brown County. You elected him.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0She was right. Same as old, white guys elected this president. He was chosen overwhelmingly by my kind.<\/p>\n It makes me wonder what we Baby Boomers are doing with this, our Golden time? All our experience, the accumulation of our knowledge, the wisdom of years, and this is the person we have chosen as our standard bearer? This is it? The best we have to offer?<\/p>\n Shouldn\u2019t our generation be leading on care for the Earth? Wanting our grandchildren and their grandchildren to have clean air and water should be unequivocal. Instead, our country pulls out of climate agreements and guts regulations that were put in place for a reason. No generation in history has used more of the planet\u2019s resources. Now we want to leave a mess for our kids to clean up?<\/p>\n Shouldn\u2019t we be the ones who are responsible on financial matters, having balanced a checkbook our whole lives? Instead, we pile on debt that has reached incomprehensible proportions. What does 23 trillion dollars even mean? It\u2019s growing wildly to support a tax cut to create an artificial boom. We won\u2019t have to pay for it, so why not?\u00a0\u201cWe got ours\u201d<\/span>\u00a0is the message. I might remind fellow Boomers that we\u2019re not taking it with us.<\/p>\n Shouldn\u2019t we have learned compassion from a lifetime of dealing with slings and arrows thrown our way? Having lived long we have seen how difficult and challenging things can be. We can appreciate that good fortune isn\u2019t always earned, and a helping hand can give us a boost. Instead, we harshly close borders to the most vulnerable and cut programs for the poor.<\/p>\n Could we at least be kind? I\u2019m not talking about being kind to our family and people who agree with us. We could do that when we were five. Shouldn\u2019t we have learned manners and decency from a lifetime of interactions? Instead, we have a leader who attacks anyone who questions him, using insults that you wouldn\u2019t let your grandson use.<\/p>\n Shouldn\u2019t we have learned the importance of cooperation and dependability? Our allies wonder what happened to the nation that was the moral leader of the free world. Now we speak glowingly of thug rulers while shredding treaties and trade agreements. Abandoning the Kurds to the Turkish army should have been one of the most embarrassing events in our history. Instead, within days, we were back to arguing about silly things like a football player kneeling. Meanwhile Kurdish soldiers who fought alongside Americans were being killed. We should have been ashamed. We weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n I have heard often that we should\u00a0\u201cleave this world a better place.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0When we think of how this generation will be remembered, we\u2019ve got some time. Not a lot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I like to run a couple times a week, usually on Sleepy Eye\u2019s lake trail or a gravel road. This time of year, when the great outdoors isn\u2019t so great, I sometimes use the track at Vogel Arena. I was there, pushing one foot ahead of the other. A ten minute-a-mile pace is a fading …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 11:46:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117690"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117709,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117690\/revisions\/117709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}