Let Go of Yesterday

Do we live for the here-and-now? Or are we stuck in the past? When people write of our boomer generation, they think we don’t act our age. But what they might not know, as baby boomer and author Carol Hoenig writes, is that we sometimes find it hard to Let Go of Yesterday …

When I was much younger, I wrote a to-do list for my life, reminding myself to enjoy the future that lay ahead of me. I saw how hard my father worked, which seemed to be a means for survival. By the time he could enjoy his family, we all had moved on to make our own mistakes.

Then I fell in love, got married, had children, continued my education, began my career, got divorced, and now I’m working on a to-do list for my golden years, even though I didn’t accomplish everything from that first list. I intended to, but love, marriage, children, education, career, and divorce eclipsed my intensions.

Some simply call it life happening.

So it was nice when filmmaker Stephen Gyllenhaal’s publisher invited me to brunch and then to a reading Stephen was giving in support of Claptrap, his newest book of poetry. Gyllenhaal is a Hollywood producer and director and now he can add poet to his credits. He also happens to have two rather famous kids on the Big Screen and is a bona fide baby boomer. I think that a younger portion of the audience at his downtown Manhattan reading was hoping that son Jake would be there in support of his dad, but that was not the case. I couldn’t help but wonder if the young girls, some of whom had traveled from Tennessee, Michigan, and North Carolina would have made the trek if Gyllenhaal weren’t “Jake’s Dad.” But I think we all know the answer to that … even “the Dad.”

What I recall most about Gyllenhaal was his clench-fisted talks in between his readings. I enjoyed his poems — they are evocative and lyrical — but what stays with me is how he made it clear that he was just so “damn effing angry.” This was odd since just a couple weeks earlier Maggie had made him a grandpa, but while he seemed thrilled about the new family member, he still expressed frustration. It wasn’t clear what exactly had him frustrated. He did mention the political climate, but who isn’t frustrated about that? He also touched upon the fact that life is going by so fast. Too fast. Isn’t that something we baby boomers know all too well?

Maybe because he is someone who is used to bringing stories to the screen, he has a feeling of omnipotence, but with the changing tides, there is a realization that like most of us who have dug in our heels to slow the sands of time, we are still being dragged into the future. Ready or not, here it comes. Maybe having a grandchild makes it all the more obvious.

Stephen mentioned his beautiful garden back on the West Coast. He shook his head while saying that the groundskeepers enjoy what he works so hard to afford, while he barely has time to pay it any mind. How did we get on that merry-go-round of what we consider “success?” Sadly, by the time we crawl off the ride, we realize the flowers are withering and our children’s laughter is only a vague memory.

Gyllenhaal’s frustration seems to be from being trapped on that ambiguous ride to success. He implies as much in a poem that he titled, appropriately enough, Success. He writes, “My victories were never my own, just mistakes gone wrong.”

Like most of us, this baby boomer was planning for the future without allowing himself to enjoy the present. It’s not too late, though, because right now, like Gyllenhaal, we are all in the present. The question is, what will we do with it?