A recent article by Ann Hui in The Globe and Mail got me thinking about intergenerational communication and inspiration. Hui wrote about about older boomers and other seniors taking in-person Aging and Health classes alongside Gen Zs at the University of Toronto.  How open are we to different perspectives from people who do not see and experience the world the way we do?

Young, laptop tappers in sweats and hoodies sit alongside retirees equipped with spiral notebooks, pens and hearing aids. The mixing of generational opposites in one classroom offers an abundance of opportunities for valuable information sharing and developing a heightened empathy for the challenges faced by other generations.

One of the more interesting questions posed to the class by Professor Raza Mirza was, “What age would you choose if you could be any age?”. We usually consider our happiest years to be our best, and the answers are fascinating. When I posed that question to my mother a few years before she died, she replied that it was the first few years when she and Dad were married, living in post-war housing built for returning veterans. They had their first baby (me), and her sister and brother-in-law, my Aunt Betty and Uncle George, lived two doors down with their own baby, three months younger than me. Their Circle Drive neighbourhood of two dozen homes was exclusively built and occupied by young wives and their WW2 veteran husbands who were frequently little more than teenagers.

When I asked another aunt the same question about her happiest years, she replied that it was when she and my uncle first retired. For the first time in their lives, they were totally free. No jobs to tie them down five days a week. No children to feed, clothe, and care for. No responsibilities, and a bit of a nest-egg in the bank, so they didn’t have to worry about money. It was the eternal retirement dream—every day is Saturday.

Speaking For Myself

As I reflect on my own life, I’d have to say that my best years were my sixties—not the sixties when I was still in high school. Those younger years were definitely not my best, or my happiest. When I retired, I was healthy, remarried, and free of the pressures of working, commuting, and spending too much of my time doing things I no longer wanted to do. No more waking up in the early hours to the beepbeepbeep of an alarm to commute an hour to work on cold, dark winter mornings. And, we finally had the time and means to travel. Imagine Julie Andrews dancing across that alpine meadow in The Sound of Music, being joyful about what life had to offer. That was how I felt for many years after retiring. I still share that feeling to some degree, although we’re now reaching the age where health and wellness challenges have kicked in. Once again, we’re on the clock with time disappearing too quickly.

I would never consider my younger years to be my best years, and, consequently, I would never want to re-live them. Sure, I was slimmer, stronger, had better skin and hair, and more energy, but those years were also burdened by the challenges of everyday life—securing and keeping a good job (and its associated work stresses), the precarious dating scene, struggling to pay my Visa and other bills every month, saving for a down payment and buying a house. Like most boomers, I had my share of bad relationships and disappointments, as well as the usual ups and downs. I have no desire to recapture my youth. My best life began when I remarried and retired later in life. Life really does get better as time goes on.

U of T’s Aging and Health course forces two very different generations to confront a mutual lack of understanding and learn from it. The benefits of mingling two very different generations in one classroom are at odds with our tendency to keep within our own tribe, our own bubble. We watch television programs that appeal to our demographic. We follow social media sites designed by complex algorithms to reflect and reinforce our political, social, religious, and economic views. We are not naturally inclined to listen to opposing views with a healthy degree of curiosity or understanding. We are more comfortable sticking with our own crowd of similar-thinking boomers.

Age usually does engender wisdom, but with caveats. While baby boomers are confident that our life experiences have equipped us with the advantages of wisdom, perhaps we are wrong about many of the issues confronting youth today. I am absolutely guilty of measuring the challenges of Gen X, Y, and Z against our own experience, and perhaps I should be more open to a different perspective. Thanks to recent cataract surgery, I like to think I see the world through 20-year-old eyes, but those eyes still have a lot to learn at 78.

Frank Sinatra’s It Was A Very Good Year never fails to fill me with nostalgia and rekindle some good memories of my younger days. It was the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and boomers were making and living through so many history-making experiences. If I didn’t have such bad memories of sitting in classrooms in high school, I would consider taking the U of T course. And, I should probably start making friends with more Gen Zs to broaden my perspective on current issues.

While my sixties were definitely my best age, my seventies are slated to be better than my eighties probably will be. It’s important to treasure each day and celebrate the half-full glass rather than bemoaning what we’ve already consumed. Share what you feel was your best age and why in the comments below. Our wisdom is worth sharing.