with

Mike Bellah

If we are going to succeed in midlife, community concerns must take precedence over individual ones. In short, the "me generation" must become the "we generation."

No longer can I refer "your" problem; in the '90s, your problem is my problem too.

In the '90s, we must act as a community, and in communities, we succeed together or not at all.

In 1996 the leading edge of the baby boom generation turned 50. Since then, you and I have been reading a barrage of articles designed to help the generation who planned on staying young forever deal with aging. Experts are offering advice on how to be happy, fulfilled, successful, and youthful midlifers. We boomers are being urged to look inside ourselves to find individual answers for a more pleasant tomorrow. So in this column and the next, I want to address an altogether different concern; I want us to think of what our middle years can mean not to us, but to others.

In The Master Trend Cheryl Russell says we boomers are on a midlife collision course with our conflicting values. "Increasingly, the baby boom's strong sense of individuality is at odds with the community's need for supportive parents, willing volunteers, informed citizens, and productive workers," she writes. "The tension between these two forces--individual rights and community responsibilities--prevents Americans from resolving many troubling issues such as abortion rights, the federal deficit, the condition of inner cities, health care, education, and environmental protection."

Russell's assessment is clear, and just as clear is the direction our generation must take to solve these problems. If we are going to succeed in midlife, community concerns must take precedence over individual ones. In short, the "me generation" must become the "we generation." Following are some attitudes that will help.

When America once was one small community--at Plymouth or Jamestown--one person's loss was everyone's concern. People knew that disease and poverty were contagious and required the help of neighbors to overcome. Similarly today, we must acknowledge that, though larger, we are still one community. Hence pollution harms more than the just the region where it occurs; epidemics like AIDS affect more than the so-called high risk groups, and racism and gang violence in the inner city threaten the moral fabric of the entire nation. No longer can I refer to "your" problem; in the '90s, your problem is my problem too.

Likewise people in small communities do not resent the successes of their peers. They know success, too, is contagious. When one member of the community wins, all do. One of the problems with modern individualism is that it pits us against each other. We are told that the rich succeed only when the poor suffer, that whites will lose if more minorities win, or that a victory for one political party is a defeat for the other. Not so. In a community (small or large), your success is my success. We both can celebrate because we both can win.

In fact, not only can we both win. In order to truly succeed in a community, we must both win. Forget the self-help books of the '70s and '80s that told us how to individually push to the front even as others fell behind. In the '90s, we must act as a community, and in communities, we succeed together or not at all.

It is precisely this point that promises to make our midlife years the best yet. As a generation, we have never accomplished apart what we did together. Witness the decline in real personal income (individual setbacks) and the end to the Vietnam War (a collective victory). And, who knows? Working together we may get more than we expect. We may well discover in community that which often eluded us as individuals--personal happiness and fulfillment.