A bunch of us in our late 40's and early 50's got together
other night, and after evening was over I started thinking that many of us born in 1950's are in a crisis stage. People can't understand why we are so angry and grumpy sometimes. This article discusses some of issues we have with society today and might enlighten others (the younger set) as to why we seem so disillusioned, and out of sorts at times.The consensus of group was "is this all there is." We've been working since our teens. A car costs more today than what our parents bought a house for. We work and work and still don't have enough. Food costs have risen astronomically, along with utility costs, insurance costs, and housing costs.
We started laughing at one point and said we sound like our grandparents. However, it is a very sad commentary that what took place for our grandparents over numerous decades, has only taken 20 to 30 years to occur for us. The real scary thing is that salaries for many jobs have not changed over that twenty year period, while our expenses have skyrocketed, and increased one hundred fold.
We all became nostalgic when we talked about things we used to do to relax. How so many of those things are gone, or we can't afford to do them any longer. Our kids tell us we don't have a clue about school, sex, music, or what's going on in world. Again, laughter abounded with music issues, but became very serious when we talked about scary things kids do today, that we wouldn't even have thought of when we were growing up. Killing teachers, and other students never entered our minds. We had respect for our teachers and those in charge.
The next thing we ranted about was our health. For some of us, ravages of time have taken place... eyesight problems, arthritis problems, blood pressure problems, "the barnacles of life". The discussion we had on cost of health care was a lively and volatile one to say least. Many of us who have had major illness problems also went ballistic with regards to social security system, disability system and Medicare system. The majority of us have worked since our teenage years. We were incredulous when it took over a year to get money from social security system, especially when we see people playing system who don't deserve it.
