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Chris Slatter

My Blog








Jan
03

The Best Age

 Rune of the Day: Ansuz, Signals

 

At one minute past midnight on Saturday, January 1st 2011 a milestone was quietly passed by several hundred million people around the globe. It is sixty-five years since the birth of the first baby boomers, defined as January 1st 1946. The International Herald Tribune even had a picture of one of them: Aloysius Nachreiner of Buffalo, New York. With a birth date of April 30th, 1946, I am another. What are we baby boomers to make of this amazing event? In my own mind, my 65th birthday has no more significance than my 30th birthday, or my 40th. But it has for others. For the past ten years people have been asking me when I’m going to retire. People selling tickets in cinemas and bathing pools assume I have already retired and offer senior discounts. And after April 30th they can legitimately level the ultimate and indefensible charge: “Sir, you are suffering from oldness and you must now leave the arena”.
 
Trouble is, I have no intention of going. Not now, not in ten years, not in twenty. I
suspect that there are hundreds of millions like me. After all, we are the mothers and
fathers of innovation and unconventionality, we boomers. We threw off the mores of our parents to which they had been shackled since birth and moved in with our sexual partners. Our parents didn’t even have sexual partners when they were our age. We grew our hair long, carried fringed bags and smoked pot. We didn’t pursue careers, we had adventures. “Shit, I’d like to try that, man,” was a popular cliché at the time. And to show that we had no respect for our children’s values, thirty years later we did it again. There is an enduring spirit that defines baby boomers and will make us unlike any retired generation that has ever lived.
 
To show that this isn’t just a Canute-like defiance of the natural order, let me offer
some demographics. Over the first half of this century, the global population aged 60 or over is projected to expand by more than three times to reach nearly 2 billion in 2050. Active life expectancy is expanding rapidly, (some might say alarmingly, if they had just seen the 67-year-old Mick Jagger capering on stage), and that offers an enormous marketing opportunity. Sports equipment for the over seventies, further education and travel, all tailored for the ‘retired’
 
 How are these 2 billion ‘old codgers’ going to spend their time and money? I’ll tell you, we’re going to spend it on the same things we’ve always spent them on, enjoying and fulfilling ourselves. We’ll have money and dreams and nobody will be able to say we’re old, because we’re not and we’ll never be.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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About Me

I have been an advertising copywriter, film director, teacher of screenwriting and a television producer. I have worked for some of the world's largest advertising agencies in Australia and the UK before attending the London Film School for two years.


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