OK, Social Work Boomer: The Things I Believed About Getting Older

by Stephen P. Cummings, MSW, ACSW, LICSW

     Next year, I'll turn 50 years old. Everyone has unique life experiences, and here's mine: I used to have some bad ideas about what it means to get older. Here's a small sample of what I used to believe about turning 50:

• Myth 1: Curiosity wanes. I saw education, both formal and informal, as linear in growth and limited by biology. I feared getting older, because I worried the desire to understand myself and my environment would peak and decline long before my 50th birthday. 
• Myth 2: The mind closes. Along with the fear of decreased curiosity was my assumption I would reject new ideas in favor of established norms and traditions. 
• Myth 3: Eventually, the world will make sense. I think Olaf said it best in the movie “Frozen II.” When you're older, absolutely everything makes sense! The character of Olaf is approximately seven or eight years old in the movie (and made of snow). I admit I held this assumption until my late twenties. 

     I believed these fallacies because some adults of my youth enforced these examples. I had great role models growing up, but the bad memories stayed with me. I recall some older people, often authority figures like teachers, looking down at me and assuming the worst. The phrase "OK, Boomer" didn't exist when I was in my teens, but it could have; it's a deliberately provocative insult, employed when someone older refuses to listen to someone younger. It's not surprising to me that a university professor took umbrage and compared the phrase to a racial slur. (It's not.) 

     So, in the spirit of Social Work Month, here's what guides me:

• Social work is a living profession. The study and practice of social work is not linear. All parts of the work contribute to the whole. The power of this system isn’t just in the hands of professors and agency administrators, but all members of the profession coming together. 
• We must truly understand who writes the history we claim to understand. The social work profession's roots are not always laudable; we must understand how we've evolved over the generations. This is true of all history. The New York Times' 1619 Project is a current example of bringing the racist truths of U.S. history, as told by those who have felt the direct impact of that history, rather than by those who seek to change or lie about it. 
• Throughout their lives, all social workers learn from all generations. A degree enhances the profession, and perhaps it enhances knowledge and wisdom. However, our learning philosophy should draw upon all experiences and all people. We are more than our degrees.

     Even in writing this, I know there's more to say and there are different ways to think. I will continue to seek a better understanding of my environment and who I am in it. When I die, perhaps I will have achieved generativity, or even some kind of transcendence. I still won't have the answers. All I can do is hope I have left something of value behind for other generations. I'm okay with that. 

Stephen P. Cummings, MSW, ACSW, LISW, is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Iowa School of Social Work, where he is the administrator for distance education. Stephen writes The New Social Worker's Social Work Tech Notes column.