When I was very young, I knew great optimism.
I grew up in the days of the Civil Rights Movement, the Summer Of Love, Women’s Lib, Peace and the New Frontier. I watched Star Trek and read Arthur C Clarke because I believed in a better and brighter future. All the things that Generation Whimper derides as cheesy, that angry adolescents mock as Hippie, that posing cynics characterize as naive, that religious fanatics condemn as immoral, were the things that defined my outlook.
As the years and decades passed, I experienced the disappointments and watched the failures of a generation. I saw selfishness and betrayal, violence and murder, despair and suicide. I shook my head helplessly as success turned to failure, as progress was eroded by setbacks, as enthusiasm waned, as fear and insecurity undermined peace and love, as defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. Twenty-four years working in Health Care showed me a world of poverty and disease and death and tragedy, lives of hopelessness and pain, voices lost in the wilderness, prayers falling on the deaf ears of the Universe, endless potentials bagged and buried. I grasped uselessly for solutions as struggling subsided to surrender, as Art and Literature devolved to Bread and Circuses, as eloquence turned to rhetoric, as light faded into darkness.
I’ve seen the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and the aging of the Dawn of Aquarius.
Today, as weeks of rain and fog and storms broke, as the clouds parted and the sun clove the dense gray clouds, I sat sipping a bottle of Twisted Tea and reading my nostalgia magazines. I read of men and women whose stories and art have passed into history, replaced by a newer generation defined by a defensive veneer of faux cynicism and carefully jaded callousness. I turned the pages slowly, admiring their talent and insight and craftsmanship. And, suddenly, I burst into laughter. Not mocking laughter, not derisive laughter, not resigned laughter– not even the rising, high-pitched laughter of madness. It was laughter of pure joy. Joy that these people lived, that their works endure, that their vision will be available when the time comes and all falls into place.
Nor is this unusual. To be truthful, this happens to me all the time.
It happens because, despite everything I’ve seen and experienced, despite the years and decades that have wearied my body and grayed my hair and detailed my face with character lines, I still believe in the spirit that created the artwork that endures in ancient caves, the spirit that built Stonehenge and the Pyramids, the spirit that painted the Mona Lisa and American Gothic, the spirit that wrote “The Road Not Taken” and Foundation, the spirit that lifted civilization out of the Dark Ages and forged the Constitution, the spirit that put footprints in the Sea Of Tranquility. It happens because I’ve seen disaster averted and disease cured and death denied and hope rise from the ashes of destruction. It happens because I’ve known men and women who have given blood and surrendered the organs from their bodies so that another might live, because I’ve watched people die so that complete strangers can be saved, because I’ve seen those with only two nickels to rub together give one away to someone in more desperate need, and because I’ve seen hardened, calloused adult Human Beings weep over the grave of a beloved Pet. It happens because I still believe in the improvability and perfectability of Humanity; without doubt or reservation, I believe in it.
It happens because I still know great optimism.
This is how I am. How are you?
I grew up in the days of the Civil Rights Movement, the Summer Of Love, Women’s Lib, Peace and the New Frontier. I watched Star Trek and read Arthur C Clarke because I believed in a better and brighter future. All the things that Generation Whimper derides as cheesy, that angry adolescents mock as Hippie, that posing cynics characterize as naive, that religious fanatics condemn as immoral, were the things that defined my outlook.
As the years and decades passed, I experienced the disappointments and watched the failures of a generation. I saw selfishness and betrayal, violence and murder, despair and suicide. I shook my head helplessly as success turned to failure, as progress was eroded by setbacks, as enthusiasm waned, as fear and insecurity undermined peace and love, as defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. Twenty-four years working in Health Care showed me a world of poverty and disease and death and tragedy, lives of hopelessness and pain, voices lost in the wilderness, prayers falling on the deaf ears of the Universe, endless potentials bagged and buried. I grasped uselessly for solutions as struggling subsided to surrender, as Art and Literature devolved to Bread and Circuses, as eloquence turned to rhetoric, as light faded into darkness.
I’ve seen the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and the aging of the Dawn of Aquarius.
Today, as weeks of rain and fog and storms broke, as the clouds parted and the sun clove the dense gray clouds, I sat sipping a bottle of Twisted Tea and reading my nostalgia magazines. I read of men and women whose stories and art have passed into history, replaced by a newer generation defined by a defensive veneer of faux cynicism and carefully jaded callousness. I turned the pages slowly, admiring their talent and insight and craftsmanship. And, suddenly, I burst into laughter. Not mocking laughter, not derisive laughter, not resigned laughter– not even the rising, high-pitched laughter of madness. It was laughter of pure joy. Joy that these people lived, that their works endure, that their vision will be available when the time comes and all falls into place.
Nor is this unusual. To be truthful, this happens to me all the time.
It happens because, despite everything I’ve seen and experienced, despite the years and decades that have wearied my body and grayed my hair and detailed my face with character lines, I still believe in the spirit that created the artwork that endures in ancient caves, the spirit that built Stonehenge and the Pyramids, the spirit that painted the Mona Lisa and American Gothic, the spirit that wrote “The Road Not Taken” and Foundation, the spirit that lifted civilization out of the Dark Ages and forged the Constitution, the spirit that put footprints in the Sea Of Tranquility. It happens because I’ve seen disaster averted and disease cured and death denied and hope rise from the ashes of destruction. It happens because I’ve known men and women who have given blood and surrendered the organs from their bodies so that another might live, because I’ve watched people die so that complete strangers can be saved, because I’ve seen those with only two nickels to rub together give one away to someone in more desperate need, and because I’ve seen hardened, calloused adult Human Beings weep over the grave of a beloved Pet. It happens because I still believe in the improvability and perfectability of Humanity; without doubt or reservation, I believe in it.
It happens because I still know great optimism.
This is how I am. How are you?
I have really taken to a lot of metaphysical ideas which can be summed up in four words, as Walt Disney's motto went:
). The generation of 68 was finally in power. Well, it didn't turn out so great. By the end of the Schröder administration, I had grown pretty disillusioned with politics.
